In the spin room in Manchester on Tuesday night, there was palpable relief from Rishi Sunak’s team as the first head-to-head of the election campaign ended. Keir Starmer had struggled on stage to refute Sunak’s accusations that a Labour government would cost families across the country £2,000. While members of the shadow Cabinet were busy trying to remedy that by telling hacks that Sunak’s claims were nonsense, Sunak’s team were breathing sighs of relief that the Tory leader had hit his marks and delivered “when we needed it” – after a bumpy start to the week with the return of Nigel Farage and several bad polls. Sunak’s performance calmed nerves.

However, four days on and it seems even a good debate performance cannot transform the Tory fortunes. Despite widespread praise in the party for Sunak’s performance, this week many Tory MPs have started to resign themselves to the idea that the party is heading for a wipeout come 4 July. Sunak’s issue? His problems are bigger than his successes. He has this week faced criticism for those tax claims, had to apologise for skipping an international leaders event as part of D-Day commemorations and had Farage announce that he plans to return to frontline politics after all.

While Tory candidates were fuming on Friday morning (“f**king ridiculous,” says........

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