He casts doubt on the opinion polls, and predicts the Conservatives will do much better at the next election than many people think.
The prospect of a hung parliament invites hard questions which the Liberal Democrats have avoided for too long – and any answer will alienate some of their voters.
My last poll of 2026 asks, amongst other things, what voters make of government plans to restrict trial by jury, how they view the prospect of Angela Rayner returning to the Cabinet, and whether they want an early election.
The proper place of polling is marketing, yet too often politicians defer to the public on granular policy questions.
Faced with a failing government and surging parties of protest, we make no headway. We are irrelevant. Winning the trust of the people is essential, but it remains a very distant goal.
Unless both parties are really ready to make such a deal work, then the worst outcome for the Right could actually be one where they could form a government after the next election.
It need not set a precedent for the general election and, rather than trading bruising blows against each other during the campaign, it would allow both parties to direct their fire at London’s real foe: Sadiq Khan.
According to the latest Opinium polling, almost half (48 per cent) of UK adults think it was a bad Budget, while only 15 per cent think it was good.
This is simply the news environment which the Party has now to navigate: one with far more players than is historically normal, and where a piece doesn’t feel incomplete if it hasn’t checked in with the Tories.
Reform’s strategy is loud but shallow: a megaphone without a foundation. It thrives on attention but struggles to deliver at the ground level. The Conservative alternative is quiet but durable: rebuilding trust through visibility and service.
The good news is that there’s freedom in this situation. We’re not in government and we don’t have a general election to fight, so let’s experiment.
He says they are a “none of the above” populist party, and are “occupying a vacuum”.
A detailed and radical policy programme could help the Conservatives restore credibility with their erstwhile supporters.
For a treaty often at the centre of tabloid firestorms, the public at large are surprisingly reticent to leave it. Support for reform, on the other hand, is overwhelming.
This episode has reinforced longer-term problems for the Conservative. Some of the perceptions she had been working hard to improve, most notably on party unity, have suffered.