Have the Tories passed the point of no return?

If an election were held tomorrow, not only would Labour win, they would bury the Tories with a landslide majority of 314 seats, leaving the Conservatives with a forlorn rump of just 69. That’s the verdict of an opinion poll from Savanta. Even for an embattled Tory party, the verdict is notably grim.

According to the poll, not only would former prime minister Boris Johnson lose his Uxbridge seat – there would be no Tory MPs left in London at all. Rishi Sunak would also get the boot from his hitherto rock solid safe rural seat of Richmond in Yorkshire. Every single one of the famous Red Wall of former Labour seats in the north would fall and revert to their former allegiance, and there would be no Tories left north of Lincolnshire. This would be a wipeout making Tony Blair’s New Labour triumph of 1997 look insignificant and would call into question the future, indeed the very existence, of the Conservative party.

In the two years remaining to Sunak before the next election has to be called, is there anything, anything at all, that the new prime minister can do to avert this menacing rout and save not only his own premiership, but his party itself  from near extinction? Or have the Tories passed the point of no return?

It seems that the alarm bells are at last ringing in Downing Street and that the government is belatedly waking up to the yawning abyss that threatens to swallow them.