Support has evaporated, with some resigning with immediate effect

The mood among the Conservative grassroots is now grim. Fighting local elections in just one month’s time, many members in our constituency in Kent are staying at home or just delivering leaflets rather than knocking on doors.

Last night’s speech by Mrs May confirmed the sell-out many are saying is the final straw. Months and years of Jeremy Corbyn being the traitor, the Marxist, the anti-Semite and incidentally our default best electoral asset when things didn’t go so well have turned to this - Corbyn holding the key to a softer Brexit, and invited to turn it with Mrs May hand in hand. In the words of George Orwell, “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Local members are flooding WhatsApp groups with their reactions, many of which are not pretty reading for the party leadership at a critical moment in the electoral cycle. Some members are resigning with immediate effect: I expect the emails are coming in all over the country.

Election campaigns have had to distance themselves rapidly from the disastrous goings-on at Westminster, and implore voters to consider the local issues and vote on them alone. Years of careful stewardship and steady progress for Conservative-run councils in difficult economic circumstances have been put at risk - perhaps not so much from Conservative voters switching to Labour but from Conservative voters who may well stay at home and not vote at all.