48 ways the Tories could win

Conservative strategists gawp at their end-of-year opinion-poll ratings like European space officials watching another Ariane rocket plop into the ocean off French Guiana. Fret not! To misquote Emperor Hirohito, electoral fortunes may have developed not necessarily to their advantage, but extinction could yet be averted by adopting the following measures:

• Be more cheerful and stop Rishi doing his ‘your cat just died’ voice.
• Scrap the government car service and tell ministers to take National Express coaches or hitchhike. Give National Express coach drivers a small pourboire as compensation for having to accept these difficult new passengers.
• Short, sharp Bill to remove the last hereditary peers from the Lords. Bishops to be given the heave-ho, too. Tell them to concentrate on their empty churches.
• If Justin Welby retires, replace him with the Revd Marcus Walker, Rector of Great St Bart’s, possibly the last rightie in the Church of England.
• No more knighthoods for mandarins.
• But a damehood to Nadine Dorries.