OPINION - The Conservatives are reaching terminal velocity in their flight from sanity

The real Conservative plot is a subversive struggle against reality. In last Thursday’s elections, the Tories lost 397 seats and Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens gained a total of 394; in Blackpool South, the by-election swing from the Conservatives to Labour was more than 20 per cent for the fifth time in this parliament alone.

So it requires magical thinking of a high order to conclude that the public’s message to the Government was: be’s Tory antagonists have been claiming.