How Rishi bowed to pressure from his party and chickened out of a spring poll

Budget votes, when gossip is rife.

And so over the phone on Thursday afternoon the decision was made. The Prime Minister should be explicit when he appeared for a chat with ITV West Country live at 6pm.

“The collective view was better to give a bit more clarity now,” said one inner circle member involved in the discussions. “This thing had built up because of Labour and because of rumours circling in SW1 and everyone winding each other up. It was better to kill that dead.” And so it fell to the Prime Minister to carefully weave in one of the biggest political news stories of the week into his interview. It came during an unprompted discussion about the local elections on May 2.

“I’m squarely focused on those [elections] because they’re important and there’s not going to be a general election on that day,” Mr Sunak said. “But when there is a general election actually what matters is the choice at that election.”

When the presenters picked up on the remark to clarify, the Prime Minister repeated the line: “There won’t be an election on that day.” The remarks have been widely interpreted as meaning a general election this spring is off.

How seriously was spring considered? No 10 is playing down the idea, blaming Labour for elevating speculation for political ends.

There is certainly some truth in that. The speed with which the “chicken Sunak” attacks were deployed was testament to as much. One altered video clip tweeted out by the official Labour Party account just moments after the news dropped saw the Prime Minister walk up to a Downing Street podium only to emit a “cluck”.

Yesterday morning, 14 people dressed as chickens with Sunak face masks were sent to stand outside Downing Street holding letters spelling “NAME THE DATE NOW”.

The Liberal Democrats are considering creating “bottler Sunak” beer bottles, emulating a gimmick from 2007 when Gordon Brown dodged a snap poll.

But some Tory MPs were convinced those around Mr Sunak were as

‘Seven warned against a spring election. Sir Graham Brady was said to be one of them’