Settle on Sunday Deep unease as London rejects Tories

THEY left me for dead,” declared Boris Johnson as the local council results rolled in.

But the PM was not referring to the net loss of nearly 400 Conservative council seats in a terrible night for the Tories but his garish portrait of the Queen compared to those paintings of the five-year-olds sitting around him during a primary school visit.

As the fog clears on the elections, the picture reveals varyingly good performances for the opposition parties across the UK but a generally bad one for the Conservatives.

Normally in council elections, those parties which gain seats have a tendency to overstate their position while those who have lost seats tend to understate theirs. The truth lies somewhere in between.

And, of course, one key factor has to be borne in mind: fewer citizens bother to vote in local elections than in a general one. The very fact of not voting is seen as a protest by many people. In some areas, barely one-third or even one-quarter of the electorate often turn out.

Perhaps surprisingly, then, in the Downing Street bunker, the PM was said to be “buoyant”. Despite a raft of bad results, including the loss to Labour of totemic councils like Wandsworth and Westminster, one Number 10 insider noted with relief: “The sky hasn’t fallen in.

Momentum is a key factor to achieving success in politics. At present, it’s with everyone but Boris

n Tuesday, Johnson will seek to draw a line under the May 5 poll and look to the future with the Queen’s Speech. He believes, outwith London, people are “sick and tired of the Westminster bubble”, and his overriding aim is to see them through the cost-of-living crisis with a bid to “grow and strengthen the economy”.

Yet, there is clearly an undercurrent of deep unease flowing among Conservatives in the so-called “blue wall” seats after a series of losses across Somerset, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Kent. As people are set to see inflation rise to 10 per cent, calls are growing for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to pull his finger out and cut taxes.

Arguably the biggest story south of the Border was that the yellow peril of the Liberal Democrats is back on the rise. The minds of Tory

MPs are being concentrated. One observed: “What these results show is southern England is now very dicey territory for the Conservatives. In London, you are looking down the barrel of a gun.”

As Conservative backbenchers contemplate whether to ditch their leader, a Machiavellian theory is doing the rounds – that Johnson is considering urging people to call for a snap confidence vote in the hope he will win it, which would mean there could not be a challenge for another year under party rules.

Given just 12 months between May 2023 and the next scheduled election, his leadership into it would be virtually assured. Another suggestion is Johnson might even cut and run for a 2023 election, which would be a very high-stakes gamble.

What will strike many ears as remarkable was Nadhim Zahawi, the loyal Cabinet minister’s insistence, that his boss “absolutely” remained an electoral asset.

The Tories’ poor performance was nowhere better illustrated than in Scotland, where the SNP, after 15 years in government, had its best showing and Scottish Labour revived,

pushing the

Conservatives into third spot.

Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross, having flip-flopped over Johnson, made clear partygate had been a big factor in the Conservatives’ poor performance in Scotland and insisted Boris “simply can’t ignore the message that’s been sent from voters”.

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LABOUR/LIB DEM MAJORITY

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FOR a “bit of fun,” Sir John Curtice, the psephologist, extrapolated what the council results could mean for the General Election, suggesting Labour would become the biggest party and could, helped by the LibDems, just about form a majority government.

While neither Keir Starmer nor Ed Davey are talking pacts, one will be formed, officially or not, because it could be the only way to stop a fifth consecutive Conservative win.

The Labour knight hailed his party’s result as a “massive turning point” but his joy was cut short by Durham Police’s postpoll announcement that, following “significant new information” it was taking another look at his late-night curry and beer.

The Tory tabloid campaign, branding the ex-DPP a law-breaking hypocrite, seems to have paid off – for now.

However, Starmer remains adamant he did not break Covid rules. The police’s conclusion is due next month but, in the meantime, all eyes will be on Scotland Yard and whether any more fines will be heading towards Downing Street. Publication of the eagerlyawaited Sue Gray report into partygate can’t be far off now either.

If all this isn’t bad enough for the Government, there was the result in Northern Ireland. As I write, it was on course to create history by giving Sinn Fein a majority in Stormont while the DUP is refusing to form an executive because of the running sore that is the Northern Ireland protocol.

Talk will increase about a border poll on a united Ireland, and Sturgeon yesterday insisted that Sinn Fein’s performance showed there were “big questions” around the future of the UK “as a political entity”.

Yet there is no prospect of a referendum anytime soon and if one were to be held in the coming years, chances are there would be a Unionist majority against unification.

Arguably, the biggest story of the Northern Irish poll was the rise of the cross-community Alliance Party. Perhaps a generational shift is finally beginning to happen there.

However, the pictures in Johnson’s head are not about constitutional matters but his own survival and the linked costof-living crisis, which will increasingly dominate the domestic agenda in the run-up to the next election. While the Conservatives have a decision to make on their leader, Labour has to find a way to win back many of those “red wall” seats north and south of the Border that will give Starmer a chance of getting into Downing Street.

Momentum is a key factor to achieving success in politics. At present, it’s with everyone but Boris.