The jaws of defeat

The local elections could have gone worse for Rishi Sunak, but really not by much.

Ben Houchen hanging on to the Tees Valley mayoralty was as good as it got for the Conservatives, and even that was after a huge swing to Labour that the Opposition said would allow it to win every parliamentary seat in the region.

Any hope the Prime Minister had that his loyal cabinet minister Mark Harper would have been able to spin some positives was, however, well and truly dashed on Saturday night, when Andy Street – the most powerful Tory outside Westminster – lost the West Midlands mayoralty.

It was a genuine shock, and meant that Sir Keir Starmer had taken one of the Tories’ crown jewels in a moment that felt like a staging post en route to general election victory.

Mr Street used his exit interviews to warn Mr Sunak against the siren voices in the party calling for him to shift even further to the right, with the likes of Suella Braverman calling for more radical policies to staunch the bleeding.

But most Tory MPs know that elections are almost always won from the centre ground, and like the leadership plot that fizzled out, Ms Braverman’s calls are likely to go largely unheeded.

The former home secretary perhaps does have a point in suggesting that Downing Street’s “stick to the plan” mantra is beginning to resemble the infamous meme in which a dog sits in a burning house insisting “this is fine”, and that Mr Sunak needs to do something, anything to turn the tide.

However, the reality is that after tax cuts, multiple resets, the watering down of green policies and HS2, and radical moves such as attempting to ban smoking for children failed to shift the opinion polls, Mr Sunak may have no option other than sticking to his plan.