Picture the scene. It’s 5 July. A triumphant Keir Starmer has just arrived at 10 Downing Street after securing a majority of 272 – bigger than Tony Blair’s in 1997. There are 80 Tory MPs left – they have narrowly prevented Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats, on 63, from becoming Her Majesty’s Opposition. While this may sound far-fetched, this election result is an average of the past week’s polls – according to Electoral Calculus.

It is the kind of scenario that the Tories have started to warn about. After a difficult first half of the campaign, the Conservatives have concluded that their best line of defence may not be so much giving voters a positive reason to vote for them – but instead warning against the dangers of a Labour landslide.

As Conservative figures put it in one briefing to the Daily Mail, it could mean a “one party socialist state”. The hope is that voters who don’t feel much affection for the current Tory party might yet be convinced to hold their nose and vote for them to avoid giving Labour untrammelled power.

It’s a risky strategy – not least because a decent portion of former Tory voters seem to be quite relaxed about their old party being decimated. What’s more, a brief look at the senior roles the Labour right – including Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting – hold in the Shadow Cabinet, along with Morgan McSweeney’s strict candidate selection, suggests this Labour party is a far cry from Jeremy Corbyn’s.

But the warnings do........

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