Last night Rory Stewart had a conference call with volunteers to discuss the state of the delayed mayoral race. Rory’s strategy of being the Coronavirus Candidate has been scuppered with the election put off for twelve months and his hardline coronavirus position likely to be less salient by next May. Guido’s co-conspirator in on the call says it was not a happy one…

In the course of the call, Rory accepted the latest polling showing him in third place behind Sadiq Khan and Shaun Bailey was disappointing. The campaign team that had expected to have eclipsed the Tories by this point told activists it now expects the Conservative voter floor to be around 20% – meaning he has to look elsewhere for votes to squeeze. The new Rory strategy is to switch to targetting soft-left Khan voters and win second preference votes from the stubborn Tory 20%. It’ll be a long race…