Chris

Labour has been so truly awful for so long, I think we’ve forgotten what a mid-term poll is supposed to look like. Governments aren’t supposed to do well at this point. The opposition is. None of which should detract from the fact that the Tories are having an absolute nightmare right now. Clearly they are. But the poll numbers we’re seeing today just aren’t going to be the ones we go into the next election with.

Tory MPs are ruthless. They don’t hang on to failing leaders, they defenestrate them, and they find a way to do so even on occasions when their own party rules make it difficult (c.f. Ian Duncan Smith, who remained popular with the grass roots even as he was increasingly despised by the parliamentary party). It is simply a matter of timing now. Boris will cling on only as long as his backbenchers calculate it is advantageous for him to draw flak that will then be less likely to tarnish his successor.

I have long believed that his number will be up this summer; on occasions over the last 3 weeks I’ve wondered if it might be sooner but I think my base prediction is still summertime. If they get a new leader in place for the end of the summer recess, and if the covid situation improves and fuel bills start to come down a bit, then those poll figures will even out a bit.

Labour’s big underlying problem is its long-term loss of more than 40 Scottish seats. The Tories don’t have to stage much of a poll recovery for that to come back and haunt Starmer and whoever succeeds him. And with his Scottish party still paralysed by its inability to work out how to get its seats back from the Nats, it may well haunt the leader after that too.