One cannot help but wonder if the man himself now wishes he had quit the party back in October after the Prime Minister stood in Manchester and, against Street’s strongest advice, cancelled the northern leg of High Speed 2.

Statistically, of course, a narrow victory doesn’t tell us much about the national picture that a narrow defeat wouldn’t. But narratively, the difference is everything — and politics is, among other things, the business of stories.

What story can CCHQ possibly spin out of these results? The poor ministers out on the media round will try their best, arguing that failing to rout his opponents by even heavier margins poses serious questions for Sir Keir Starmer — about whom they continue to insist the nation is unenthusiastic.

But the bald truth is this: for the Conservatives, these results are an endless vista of dark clouds with hardly a silver lining in sight. The odd defence in a target council, and a clutch of police and crime commissioners squeaking home by tiny margins on woeful turnouts, cannot disguise it.

The loss of hundreds of councillors is a heavy blow. Not just because council elections — which hinge much more on party brand — seem more likely to presage a general election than the mayoral contests but because councillors, along with the friends and family they persuade to help, are the front-line infantry of a political party.

Many of those who have just lost their seats — perhaps, like Street, in spite of years of hard and unglamorous work in town halls — will be much less likely to give up their cold November evenings to help re-elect this government. A difficult election just became that much harder.

Reform UK is also belatedly maturing into a credible threat. Where it stood candidates, the Conservatives suffered, even if it failed to build up a councillor base of its own. Heaven knows the panic it would have unleashed among Tory MPs had it edged into second place in Blackpool South, as it almost did.

In London, meanwhile, the Conservatives have once again posted a paltry result against Sadiq Khan, who on his record ought to be an eminently beatable opponent. On crime, on housing, on nightlife, on so much, he has failed and continues to fail the capital.

The good news for Sunak is that, as it stands, this rout seems unlikely to trigger a move against him. Almost two-thirds of Tory members oppose it; most of those who covet his job prudently want to wait until after the general election to claim it.

Perhaps, too, the result will shake the party from any lingering complacency, forcing CCHQ to abandon the absurd idea of fighting the next election with an 80/20 strategy and pouring all its resources into the sort of deep defence the state of the polls clearly demands.

Or perhaps, by the time MPs are back in London on Monday, the party will have completely lost its head. Either way, things are going from bad to worse for Rishi Sunak.

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Henry Hill is Deputy Editor of ConservativeHome.

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