A couple of weeks ago we were told it was Rishi Sunak’s best week ever. Now, it is hard to even remember why. The Rwanda Bill was passed, and the Prime Minister had some important photocalls playing statesman with European allies. Now it seems nothing the party can do will shift the dial.

The local elections suggest this is the case. Number 10 have pointed to the projected national share (PNS) of the results, which suggests there will be a hung parliament at the next election. This is statistically illiterate self-delusion. The PNS is a flawed metric which ignores differential turnout, regional variations and overweighs the success that minor parties have at a local level. Anyone putting stock in it as a predictor of the general election is either trying to fool you or fool themselves. It is hard to overstate how bad these locals were for the Conservative party.

At the mayoral level, the party was close to wiped out. Andy Street couldn’t hold the West Midlands, despite his personal brand and Labour haemorrhaging votes to a Gaza-focused insurgent independent. Ben Houchen saw his majority slashed with a swing which, if repeated in the general election, would wipe out all Tory MPs in the region. The party lost every other mayoral contest, even those like North Yorkshire where they should have had a fighting chance.

In the council elections, there was a similar tale of woe. The party lost control of ten local authorities out of the 16 it held going into the election. Out of the 989 seats the Tories held before this contest, they lost 474, an attrition rate of almost half. This was a kicking. It shows the electoral peril they are in and will have damaged and demotivated the activist base. It’s a double hit.

These contests show quite clearly how the party’s popularity has sunk. More than that, they show how the country is turning on the party and wants to punish it. In the bigger contests, like the Tees and Midlands mayorships, the party name was like being........

© The Spectator