‘We’re stuffed’: have Conservatives given up on winning the next general election?

With over 60 Tory MPs standing down and councillors quitting before council elections, there is a sense party expects a heavy defeat

Hours after Wednesday’s budget, the Conservative party’s great and good assembled under the sweeping stone arches of the medieval Guildhall in London to hear Rishi Sunak address the 50th anniversary dinner for the Centre for Policy Studies thinktank. His party had a clear plan, the prime minister told hundreds of Tory MPs, peers, donors and other assorted luminaries: one centred on higher growth and lower taxes.

Many of those gathered had listened in person as Jeremy Hunt unveiled another 2p cut in national insurance but failed to produce anything approximating the rabbit-from-a-hat announcement that Tory MPs hoped might start shifting the polls. Sunak’s remarks were therefore greeted with scepticism, and some even raised eyebrows and politely shook heads. One attender called the event the “most opulent funeral I’ve ever been to”.