Inside No. 10’s battle of the pollsters

There was plenty for Rishi Sunak and his cabinet to discuss on Tuesday morning. The Conservatives had lost half of the seats they defended in the local elections and Andy Street narrowly lost the West Midlands mayoralty to Labour. ‘We’re doomed,’ was one cabinet member’s verdict. Ben Houchen’s victory in Teesside was just enough to stop any serious move against the Prime Minister: he is safe until the general election.

Isaac Levido, the Australian political strategist who ran the Tories’ successful 2019 campaign, did his best to fight off a sense of defeatism. He briefed the cabinet that this year’s election race is much closer than commentators and opinion polls suggest. Look at Dudley, he said. Keir Starmer had kicked off his campaign there saying he was ‘looking to win’. He used his final campaign visit to go to Harlow to make the same point. Yet Labour failed to take control of either council.