Local Elections 2022: A Mauling and a Glimmer of Hope
The remarkable thing about Tuesday's excellent interview on Good Morning Britain that Susanna Reid conducted with Boris Johnson is that I'm sure - at some point - CCHQ whispered to Johnson that it would go smoothly or that Reid would be a lightweight and/or a pushover.
It didn't go smoothly at all.
It was a car crash.
It could be argued that the more notable elements ["who's Lorraine?"] were performative, but then on the other hand it seemed as though Johnson had demonstrably nothing to offer people struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, nor the empathetic capacity to even grapple with some of the basic questions being asked of him.
Actually, Johnson’s lack of sympathy was noted by a backbencher and former cabinet minister who said:
“[The Good Morning Britain Interview] won’t have won us many votes. Boris doesn’t actually care about these people. He basically despises most of the human race, so that makes it quite difficult for him to sympathise.”
This set the stage for what was to be a nightmare week for the Conservatives where insider Tory sources were declaring, “If the elections are anything short of a mauling it will be a success” as early as Tuesday, and local candidates were sending out leaflets [in Hartlepool and elsewhere] with the following message in an attempt to distance themselves from the national party:
It was never really likely to go any other way - and a mauling is what they got.