The British election is becoming an episode of mob justice

The Conservative Party is deeply unpopular. That is a simple point, but one still often missed. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, enjoys an approval rating that matches Sir John Major’s at his mid-1990s nadir, when the party was on the cusp of a historic defeat at the hands of Sir Tony Blair. The Conservatives enjoy an average poll rating of 23—about 20 points behind the Labour Party. It is a decent score for a third party; it is a cataclysmically awful one for a party of government. Polls may narrow, say pathologically nervous Labour advisers and desperate Conservative ones. Equally, they may widen.