Over the course of the past year some people have, from time to time, been wise enough to remind us of just how difficult it will be for the Tories to win a majority. That’s a consequence, of course, of their past anaemic performances (and a further reminder that the base is far from enough) and of the way that the current constituency boundaries are stacked against them.
Nevertheless, I suspect many of us have under-estimated those warnings thinking that this Labour government is so-clapped out and unlikeable that surely the electorate will turn on them. This wasn’t an unreasonable assumption even if it might also have been premature at a time in which politics as a whole is held in such low regard by the public that the idea there could be a better way proves less powerful than might be the case in other, less difficult, circumstances.
Add an uninspiring, confusing and less than convincing beginning to the Tory campaign and you end up where we are: the Tories in the lead but not by as much as once they were and not by as much as many people think they ought to be.
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