Tory MPs are already starting to talk about May’s various elections. Boris Johnson’s first post-Covid electoral test will take place on 6 May and will show the durability — or otherwise — of his 2019 electoral coalition now that Brexit is ‘done’ and Jeremy Corbyn is gone. Can the Tories hold on to the much-prized Teesside and West Midlands mayoralties? If the answer is yes, the party will feel it can face the future with confidence. If not, it will start to panic.
But the most significant result of the night will be the most predictable one: a Scottish National party victory in Holyrood. The SNP is currently polling comfortably, and consistently, at more than 50 per cent. Even normally optimistic Tories are downbeat about the prospects of denying the nationalists a majority. ‘On the election result front, pessimism is realism,’ one tells me.
An SNP majority means that Nicola Sturgeon will once again request a second independence referendum from Westminster.
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