The night of a thousand losses

Thursday 4th May was local elections, and political pundits speculated as to what would be a bad night for the Conservative Party. Losing a thousand Councillors seemed to be the worse case end of the spectrum.

By lunchtime with losses nudging 400, Government Ministers went on TV to say that the losses were not as bad as predicted, so not such a bad night after all.

Problem with this course of defence was that not all results were in, and as the afternoon wore on, losses mounted on the blue side.

By the time we returned from John's, losses had passed the thousande mark, and the result was even worse than predicted, with even places like Dover and Thanet went Labour instead of Conservative. Councils of Ministers were lost too.

THe question is, what does the PM do now.

The Coronation pushed the story mostly off the back pages, but clearly these losses are huge, and if not addressed than a real hammering is likely in the election in 18 months time.

As always, the question will be what the root cause of the losses were; if it was Brexit, the small boats, cost of living, corruption, then adjusting Government policy to appeal to voters in the face of the baying of the gammon faced Brexiteers and cutlure war warriors will be much difficult.

The policy of more and more culture wars has not cut through. At all.

But probably most of all, it was a 1980s pop start hat has caused the most damage to the Government, although that was self-inflicted.

Water companies have been pumping sewage and untreated water into our rivers, steams, lakes and seas for over a year now, and Fergal Sharkey has been the leader of the opposition, using his past fame to get on TV shows and in papers, even the Mail, to highlight the ecocide being waged on the British countryside.

Turds in our rivers and beaches closed for bathing cannot be covered up on a local level, and people are very angry indeed.

If the Conservatives are not there to protect this green and pleasant land, then what are they for?

That is the question they need to ask.