Getty ImagesBy Laura KuenssbergPresenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg”This is the moment,” a senior Tory excitedly told me just before these local elections began. The moment when Rishi Sunak’s leadership was in jeopardy – they hoped at least. If the results were as dreadful as months of shocking national opinion polls suggest, there was a chance that Conservative MPs would find the desire and the gumption to push for change at the top.On Saturday night, West Midlands Mayor Andy Street lost his berth after a nail-biting count. That will be a huge disappointment to the Conservatives who had hoped to hang on there.Especially with a razor thin margin, and after counting some votes again and again.Like Ben Houchen on Teesside, Andy Street had campaigned as his own man, not a party apparatchik.Recounts, and bundles of votes being checked, tell you how close that outcome really was. The Street result is a huge last minute disappointment, and the council election results are dire. One minister told me there are “lots of places where panic could come from”. But even with the Street defeat, it seems “the moment” is more likely to be the one where Rishi Sunak’s position as leader has been confirmed. So far.Why? Well, Tory HQ can’t mention the mayor in Tees Valley, Ben Houchen’s victory, often enough. Before the elections, the party was urging its own MPs and the public to concentrate on where there were prominent local politicians. It was a not very subtle pre-poll expectation management exercise. Lord Houchen, a local big character, did indeed buck the national trend. And that showed that in areas where Conservatives had a good, well-known candidate and chucked the kitchen sinks at their campaign, they can win. Although “there’s an irony that a Boris guy, Ben, has saved Sunak”, one Tory jokes. But the result there does give the party at least one reason for cheer. Sign up for the Off Air with Laura K newsletter to get Laura Kuenssberg’s expert insight and insider stories every week, emailed directly to you.Second, the pundits’ calculators suggested that if the whole country had voted on Thursday, the gap between the Conservatives and Labour comes out at 9%: not, theoretically, an insurmountable gap to close when the general election campaign is miles away and could bend the curves. One cabinet minister said that after months of “frothing at the mouth about apocalypse actually, maybe we could have a hung parliament. This will encourage people to believe there is a fight worth having.”Remember too, Labour fell so far behind in 2019 that it needs to shift millions of votes, not a few here and there, to win outright when it comes to the national question. And even if the numbers look scary in lots of parts of the country, with the Tories losing hundreds of campaign foot soldiers, changing the leader to an as-yet-undecided alternative candidate might just cause more disruption, more bellyaching, more turmoil. If chaos in the Westminster party has been part of the problem, why on earth would it be the solution? A former minister says: “There just isn’t the impetus to roll the dice one more time.” There is no one guiding idea or philosophy that binds the malcontents together either, beyond ‘it looks grim, surely we need to do something or else we’re out of a job?’ And there is no agreed candidate. Indeed, one of those who might be tempted to run, former cabinet minister Suella Braverman, has written in the Sunday Telegraph that while she believes the party must change course, changing the leader is not the answer. Live: Conservatives lose West Midlands mayor raceFind your local election results John Curtice: Sheer scale of defeat will worry ConservativesMason: Night of high drama in West MidlandsWhat are the main takeaways?How Sadiq Khan won over London for a third timeKey results in maps and chartsWhen is the next general election?Watch: Key results in 90 secondsRewind to the Theresa May days. The rebels weren’t just well organised, they agreed they needed a more dramatic departure from the EU and they had a candidate waiting in the wings – Boris Johnson. They were pushing for a different policy platform and they had a big personality, …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnGetty ImagesBy Laura KuenssbergPresenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg”This is the moment,” a senior Tory excitedly told me just before these local elections began. The moment when Rishi Sunak’s leadership was in jeopardy – they hoped at least. If the results were as dreadful as months of shocking national opinion polls suggest, there was a chance that Conservative MPs would find the desire and the gumption to push for change at the top.On Saturday night, West Midlands Mayor Andy Street lost his berth after a nail-biting count. That will be a huge disappointment to the Conservatives who had hoped to hang on there.Especially with a razor thin margin, and after counting some votes again and again.Like Ben Houchen on Teesside, Andy Street had campaigned as his own man, not a party apparatchik.Recounts, and bundles of votes being checked, tell you how close that outcome really was. The Street result is a huge last minute disappointment, and the council election results are dire. One minister told me there are “lots of places where panic could come from”. But even with the Street defeat, it seems “the moment” is more likely to be the one where Rishi Sunak’s position as leader has been confirmed. So far.Why? Well, Tory HQ can’t mention the mayor in Tees Valley, Ben Houchen’s victory, often enough. Before the elections, the party was urging its own MPs and the public to concentrate on where there were prominent local politicians. It was a not very subtle pre-poll expectation management exercise. Lord Houchen, a local big character, did indeed buck the national trend. And that showed that in areas where Conservatives had a good, well-known candidate and chucked the kitchen sinks at their campaign, they can win. Although “there’s an irony that a Boris guy, Ben, has saved Sunak”, one Tory jokes. But the result there does give the party at least one reason for cheer. Sign up for the Off Air with Laura K newsletter to get Laura Kuenssberg’s expert insight and insider stories every week, emailed directly to you.Second, the pundits’ calculators suggested that if the whole country had voted on Thursday, the gap between the Conservatives and Labour comes out at 9%: not, theoretically, an insurmountable gap to close when the general election campaign is miles away and could bend the curves. One cabinet minister said that after months of “frothing at the mouth about apocalypse actually, maybe we could have a hung parliament. This will encourage people to believe there is a fight worth having.”Remember too, Labour fell so far behind in 2019 that it needs to shift millions of votes, not a few here and there, to win outright when it comes to the national question. And even if the numbers look scary in lots of parts of the country, with the Tories losing hundreds of campaign foot soldiers, changing the leader to an as-yet-undecided alternative candidate might just cause more disruption, more bellyaching, more turmoil. If chaos in the Westminster party has been part of the problem, why on earth would it be the solution? A former minister says: “There just isn’t the impetus to roll the dice one more time.” There is no one guiding idea or philosophy that binds the malcontents together either, beyond ‘it looks grim, surely we need to do something or else we’re out of a job?’ And there is no agreed candidate. Indeed, one of those who might be tempted to run, former cabinet minister Suella Braverman, has written in the Sunday Telegraph that while she believes the party must change course, changing the leader is not the answer. Live: Conservatives lose West Midlands mayor raceFind your local election results John Curtice: Sheer scale of defeat will worry ConservativesMason: Night of high drama in West MidlandsWhat are the main takeaways?How Sadiq Khan won over London for a third timeKey results in maps and chartsWhen is the next general election?Watch: Key results in 90 secondsRewind to the Theresa May days. The rebels weren’t just well organised, they agreed they needed a more dramatic departure from the EU and they had a candidate waiting in the wings – Boris Johnson. They were pushing for a different policy platform and they had a big personality, …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
