Today we are going to ask you to put yourself in another person’s shoes. This person is a Conservative MP.
Their seat would – under normal circumstances – be considered safe(ish). On the basis of months of polls, and last night’s stunning Labour victories in Wellingborough and in Kingswood, their seat is now very much at risk. They are not yet ready to wave goodbye to the political career for which they worked so hard. They are frightened and they are angry.
The despair of this MP is enhanced, not reduced, by the twin debacles that dogged the Labour Party in the run-up to yesterday’s by-election results. Sure, they enjoyed watching Starmer dump his signature green policy. And yes, they were pleased to see him appear to dither over disciplining a candidate accused of horrible antisemitism. But then they woke up this morning and saw that neither event had triggered anything approaching a collapse in Labour’s electoral support.