The Tories are right to be nervous

Despite their consistent poll lead, the Tories are anxious. There is only a week to go and in many seats the race is far too tight for comfort. Because they have no potential partners in a hung parliament, if the Tories win, it will be by the ‘skin of their teeth’, I’m told. ‘There’s quite a lot of nervousness at CCHQ,’ says one cabinet minister sounding decidedly nervous.

The big Tory concern is that the Remain vote is beginning to coalesce around Labour. To date, the Tories have benefitted from the fact they’re uniting the Leave vote, while Remain is split. If that changes, the likelihood of a majority will be greatly reduced.

How has Labour managed to pull off this squeeze, when Jeremy Corbyn himself has said that he would stay neutral during a second Brexit referendum? Perhaps, as one Tory campaign aide frets, the Tories have been ‘too effective at framing this as a binary choice’.