Today has been the annual local election briefing for the media by the Tory elections specialist Lord Hayward and he made what should prove to be a fairly accurate prediction about Culture Secretary Dorries. True to form in that period after the polls have closed on May 4th and we await the results Hayward suggested she’ll be going on TV arguing that the Tories would have done far better if Johnson had still been in post.

In fact in his review and analysis of the trends the Tories are still struggling but are doing better than we have seen in recent years. One sign is how much better Sunak’s personal ratings – a trend that is still to be seen in the voting numbers.

Over the next few days I’ll do posts linked to his presentation.

Mike Smithson