The Tory wipe-out is inevitable – unless you’re in the Westminster bubble

Do you know that famous bit in the Road Runner cartoons? You know the one. Wile E. Coyote runs and runs to try and catch that stupid bird and he gets so pent up he ends up running over a cliff, and his legs keep moving over thin air, then eventually he realises that his feet aren’t touching anything anymore, and he’s pedalling into oblivion, and that’s when he ends up falling down.

It does also seem to be the inspiration behind the behaviour of many people in Westminster currently. Jeremy Hunt will be delivering his Budget tomorrow and headlines are focusing on this or that tax cut, wondering what the chancellor will announce, and whether it may take voters away from the Labour party and back into the Conservative fold.

There are pieces discussing who’s up and who’s down – most recently, a profile of Claire Coutinho pitched her as the potential next chancellor, and one of the party’s brightest rising stars. There are, as always, columns on the various factions of the parliamentary Conservative party, what they mean, what they want, and which one of the lot may end up coming out on top.

The shot is tight and it is focusing on Wile E. Coyote, hellbent on catching the road runner and unwilling to stop. Everything is fine, and everything is normal.

Then, sometimes, the shot gets just a bit wider, and more is revealed. On Monday, an Ipsos poll commissioned by the Evening Standard found that the Conservative party was polling at 20%, down seven points from January and, overall, 27 points behind the Labour party. It is the lowest result for the Tories since Ipsos began running their regular poll tracker in 1978 – nearly half a century ago. Wile E. Coyote’s legs are moving and moving, but the edge of the cliff is long gone, and there is nothing underneath him anymore.

It is an odd state of affairs. MPs are, for the most part, behaving normally, and so are journalists and other Westminster watchers. They bicker and gossip and wonder what will happen at the election, and some of them will sometimes tell you that hey, it may not be all to play for, but it could still be a hung parliament, right? Imagine if it really happened!

They look at stories of slight Labour infighting and raise an eyebrow, asking themselves and each other if it may mean that the opposition will implode at some point before Sunak calls the election. Some of them would actively like that to happen; others, spooked by endless years of defeat, have become too superstitious for their own good.

What unites them is that they are all living in a broad state of denial. Of course, the Labour party will win the next general election. It is possible that it will win it by only a few seats – Keir Starmer may yet be unveiled as the Croydon Cat Killer, or decide to come out in favour of gulags. Really, though, it will almost certainly win by a landslide.

It doesn’t really matter what the Conservatives do anymore. There will be a Budget and people will “oooh” and “aaah” but there is no intervention that could alter the Tories’ fate at this stage. They’re stuffed. Even the received wisdom that polls tend to tighten as election day gets closer may not hold.

The election will be, at the absolute latest, in ten months, but the governing party keeps finding ways of making itself less and less popular. Why would they suddenly become more palatable to the electorate? What haven’t they tried yet, that they could realistically try without blowing up the parliamentary party? The jig is up. It has been for some time.

Then again, what are we all supposed to do until the election? It may seem absurd that Westminster bubble denizens are going about their lives as normal, but it isn’t clear what else they could be doing. No-one actually thinks there will be another Tory chancellor after Jeremy Hunt but sure, we can pretend. It keeps us busy and entertained while waiting for that blasted election. Anything to pass the time, eh?