Reform’s lead waning, Labour struggling and Badenoch doing well at PMQs all boost mood but is disaster inevitable?
“T
he Conservative party is coming back,” Kemi Badenoch declared at her party’s local election launch last week, surrounded by cheering supporters. And it’s fair to say that many of her MPs are, relative to their mood in recent years, quite cheery.
To others in the Conservative family, though, this optimism appears disconnected from the reality of the situation facing the party. Even the MPs backing Badenoch agree that the Tories face heavy losses on 7 May, not just across English councils, but particularly in votes for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, where in both they are expected to be reduced to a handful of seats.
This is in part a factor of circumstance. The last time Scotland and Wales elected parliaments was May 2021, when the Conservatives were amid a short-lived vaccine bounce under Boris Johnson, enjoying national poll ratings above 40%.
