Jeremy Corbyn had a bad night – but the Tories still have much to fear from the left
It’s a bit mean to accuse the Tories of cynical expectations management, as Jeremy Corbyn has just done. Their panic was quite genuine. I’ve spoken to a great many Tories over the last few weeks, and none would have been so bold as to predict today’s results. Rallings & Thrasher had expected the Tories to lose 75 seats in aggregate, and so far they’re about flat. Given the awful time that Theresa May has had recently, it’s not a bad result. It was, as Tory chairman Brandon Lewis has said, a ‘reasonable’ night. But the fact that such a close result is described as ‘reasonable’ shows how far things have
