Jeremy Corbyn had a bad night – but the Tories still have much to fear from the left

It’s a bit mean to accuse the Tories of cynical expectations management, as Jeremy Corbyn has just done. Their panic was quite genuine. I’ve spoken to a great many Tories over the last few weeks, and none would have been so bold as to predict today’s results. Rallings & Thrasher had expected the Tories to lose 75 seats in aggregate, and so far they’re about flat. Given the awful time that Theresa May has had recently, it’s not a bad result. It was, as Tory chairman Brandon Lewis has said, a ‘reasonable’ night.

But the fact that such a close result is described as ‘reasonable’ shows how far things have deteriorated for the Conservatives. When Jeremy Corbyn deprived Theresa May of her majority last year, the Tories had no idea what hit them and wondered if this was a freak result. Whether Labour support was genuinely so high, or whether they had only done so well because no one expected Corbyn to win.