Tim Bale is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London and an expert on the modern Conservative party. He said Sunak was engaged in “a numbers game”, aware that Tory majorities in the blue wall tended to be bigger than in red wall seats taken from Labour in 2017 and 2019. He said: “Putting it bluntly, Sunak can afford to lose a fair few southern votes without necessarily losing southern seats, but in the north and the Midlands, losing votes is more likely to mean losing seats too.”
The Guardian