Who are the people who will still vote Tory? True, there are not many left, but a solid core of 20% of the population will opt for more of the same, the lowest percentage in polling history, says Prof John Curtice. That many still seem willing to re-elect those who did such national damage is, to put it politely, perplexing.

Do they really back the exceptionally mean-spirited and squalid bribery of their party’s prospectus? Well, the great majority have better things to do than read manifestos. But go out and talk to ordinary Tory voters and you find their state of mind out of tune with their party’s hierarchy. That’s why most traditional Tories have fled, ignored by the manifesto writers who press on with deeper cuts to collapsing public services, adding to the 4.3 million children going hungry.

Sunak’s enormous £17.2bn tax giveaway has lit no spark, perhaps because the richest fifth of households would be £1,300 better off on average, while the poorest fifth would gain just £150. Shocked at the state of the NHS, present Tories and those who have fled would also be horrified by the secretive £20bn spending cuts their chancellor is lobbing into next year, if they knew about them.

I went looking for old-fashioned Tories in East Grinstead and Uckfield, a deep-blue constituency in Sussex where the Tories are predicted to win by a margin of 5.7 percentage points.

I am in an unposh corner of town, with shabby maisonettes, some rented, some owned, mainly peopled by those on lowish incomes, who have voted Tory all their lives against their own interests, a perennial mystery to Labour. This area is Tory by identity, so I expected strong commitment here, but in those doorstep encounters few fitted their party’s policy template, nor chimed with that selfish and........

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