For Tories reeling from local election disaster, denial is the first stage of grief

The people have spoken – the b*****ds,” would-be senator Dick Tuck notoriously remarked after being trounced. But at least he was paying attention. By contrast, the UK electorate yelled their heads off in towns and cities, and a parade of senior Conservatives responded by putting their fingers in their ears and singing “la la la”.

Phase one of Rishi Sunak’s big fightback began when the ballot boxes were opened, revealing an unmistakably odorous message from voters. However, phase one seemed to borrow from Theresa May’s 2017 election ploy of pretending nothing has changed.

“These results are typical for a government in mid-term,” la-lahed party chair Richard Holden, a sponge of a man tasked with soaking up all the mockery and taunts on the morning media round. Midterm? After four and a half years, three prime ministers, umpteen sleaze scandals and five by-elections with 20-plus point swings against the government, normal folk might conclude this is not a sticky patch, but the ghastly fag end of a particularly grotesque parliament.

Holden the Human Sponge breezed “it’s early days” as Labour seized back Hartlepool and won Blackpool South by a landslide, while the Reform Party sucked away blue-collar votes in key battlegrounds.

“’Tis but a scratch,” Monty Python’s Black Knight would have agreed.

This was the tone set by senior ministers during a long night of early election results: Deny everything. First shift was taken by cabinet minister Chris Heaton-Harris, who looked feverish; eyes bulging, perspiring, with a five o’clock shadow coming through. He claimed on the BBC elections special that the Rwanda policy was “obviously having a deterrent effect”. This was mighty strange considering it had zero deterrent effect on the record 711 people who crossed the channel in small boats on Wednesday.

As the TV beamed images of defeated Tory councillors, faces bluer than the rosettes still pinned to their chests, Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, said the Tories just needed to “continue on the trajectory of delivery”.

After Heaton-Harris was sent home for some much-needed sleep, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, took over. He managed to give two contradictory explanations for the dismal results: first that “it’s always difficult when you are in government”; and then that “it’s difficult against a high base” of Tory gains back in 2021 when, funnily enough, they were also in government.

For some reason, the Tories used to find winning a lot easier. Could it be because they had a prime minister who knew how to win elections, before they sacked him and ended up with a banker who has absolutely no rapport with the public?

Harper was followed by deputy Tory chair Angela Richardson, wearing an NHS-blue blouse and channelling pure Nurse Ratched. In a soft, controlling voice, she gaslighted us that there were “a lot of don’t knows and a lot of Conservatives who haven’t made up their minds”, despite the breaking news that Labour had polled almost three times as many votes as the Conservatives in Blackpool South.

Cue Joan Sims as Lady Ruff-Diamond during the dinner party scene in Carry on Up the Khyber, noticing only “a spot of thunder” as cannonballs crashed down on her dinner party.

Keir Starmer dashed to Blackpool with Angela Rayner for a quick victory lap, boasting that the “seismic win” was the most important result of the day. But for him nothing really has changed yet – denied a general election date, he’ll be kicking his heels for months.

Senior Tories claimed the only really important contest was that Tory-ish mayor Ben Houchen had clung on in Tees Valley – a contest that Labour conceded early, hoping to subvert the all-too-obvious expectations management. Houchen, reading the bigger picture, said he would work with any future Labour government.

As for the hapless Sunak’s future, Holden claimed, with Comical Ali sincerity, that “the prime minister is actually in a very strong position”.

Well, up to a point. If Sunak crawls on to the election, it may simply be because rebel Tory MPs, confronted with such dismal results, have lost hope that changing prime minister for a fourth time in five years could save their skins.

Andrea Jenkyns, a diehard Friend of Boris whose letter of no confidence in Sunak was posted last November, summed up the prime minister’s strong position witheringly: “I’m not sure that colleagues are going to be putting the letters in, so we’re working with what we’ve got.”

Denial is, of course, only the first stage of grief. The second stage is anger – and there will be a lot more of that to come as the votes are counted this weekend.