Sticking with Boris Johnson looks like a safe bet for the Tories

Labour spin doctors this morning whisked Keir Starmer to the scene of his party’s biggest gain in the north in order to provide the TV networks with pictures of him celebrating victory. They took him to Barnet. That’s Barnet, North London. For that’s how far the red tide ran last night. It couldn’t even sweep over nearby Hillingdon, the borough that contains the Prime Minister’s parliamentary seat.

And though Starmer told his activists in strangulated, overly-urgent tones that Labour had also won in Cumberland, where a new unitary council was having its first election, the list of other gains he recited – Wandsworth, Westminster, Southampton – made the point that the Red Wall had not fallen into his lap. Far from it. Labour was actually this morning on track to record a modest loss of council seats outside the capital.

The idea that the Conservatives cannot stay in power if Johnson is still at the helm has taken a battering

Even in the capital what we saw in the main was the continued progression of demographic trends that have been helping Labour for 20 years: a higher proportion of voters from ethnic minority groups with Labour-voting traditions, millions of EU citizens voting and the gradual exit of culturally conservative, lower-middle class English voters to provincial towns.