Tories need some calm reflection and collective discipline

THE GOOD sense in simply keeping calm and carrying on is never the most exciting thing for people to hear about when the going gets tough and the temptation is to panic.

- Patrick O’Flynn

But that, in effect, is what Boris Johnson asked Tory supporters to do yesterday after two heavy by-election defeats – one in the north and one in the south – inflicted by a pincer movement of Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

“We will keep going, addressing the concerns of people until we get through this patch,” was the reaction of the Prime Minister after the Tory defeats in Tiverton & Honiton and in Wakefield. Given that some of his own flapping MPs tried and failed to unseat him less than three weeks ago, setting in place the worst possible backdrop for these by-elections as far as Tory prospects were concerned, a period of calm reflection and collective discipline does not seem like too much to ask for.

Of the two defeats, the one down in Devon at the hands of the Lib Dems saw by far the biggest vote swing. Yet this is what the Liberals do to the Tories in mid-term by-elections, time and again. And on almost every occasion, the seat in question returns to the Conservative fold at the general election.