Are the Tories heading for a night of a thousand losses?

It’s easy to spot when a party thinks it is going to get the thumbs down from voters in the annual round of local elections each May. It tries to up everyone’s expectations of just how badly it will do. It does so in the hope that the results themselves are not actually as bad as ‘forecast’, so that the party can say it is, therefore, in a better position than everyone thought after all.

For this year’s elections taking place on Thursday, the Conservatives have adopted this stance. Its spokespeople have been happy to repeat an academic analysis of a couple of months ago. This suggested that, given where it stood in the opinion polls at that point, the Conservatives were likely to lose a thousand council seats. Doubtless its repeat of that claim means the party is hoping its losses prove not to be as heavy as that – and so, the party will be able to argue, when the results are declared on Thursday night and Friday, that it is making ‘progress’. Of