Two years ago when the Tories won the Hartlepool by-election at the local elections, the political mood was summed up by a 30ft inflatable blow-up of the then prime minister Boris Johnson looming over the town. He was photographed in front of it as part of his victory lap. The message was clear: under his leadership, the Tories were insurmountable and no seat was safe for Labour in what used to be the party’s heartlands.

There are no plans for similar photo ops for the local elections next month. In fact, according to one No. 10 staffer, photographers are actively being avoided. No national media were invited to the Tories’ campaign launch. The elections are viewed in Downing Street as an exercise in damage limitation. The Tories are tipped to lose up to 1,000 council seats. Given that the last time many of these were contested was when Theresa May was at the lowest point of her premiership in 2019 and oversaw the worst rout since 1995, it would be a dismal result.

4 May will be Rishi Sunak’s first electoral test. ‘I know the local elections are going to be incredibly tough,’ he has told MPs. ‘We shouldn’t expect the voters to reward that hard work in full just yet… because we still have more to do.’ After a good few weeks for the government, bad election results could stall the Prime Minister’s attempts to rejuvenate his party. ‘It’s the moment the polls will become real to a lot of MPs,’ warns one former cabinet minister.

Labour sees the vote as an opportunity to show that the party is on an unstoppable path to power. Keir Starmer’s campaign director Morgan McSweeney has warned aides and MPs of the need to run a tight and focused operation. They have been told not to deviate from the ‘grid’ of scheduled announcements and to avoid any attempts by the Tories to steer the conversation on to culture war issues. ‘We know that is all they have left,’ says one Labour adviser. ‘The message is simple: don’t get sucked in. Don’t give them oxygen.’

The main hope in No. 10 is that the news agenda will move on quickly from local election losses, since the coronation will take place the day after the results come in. ‘Once again the King comes to the rescue,’ jokes one senior Tory MP, referring to the monarch’s role in charming the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on the day the Windsor Agreement was signed.

Even if the elections results are as bad as predicted, there is not a sense within the Tory party that it would be a moment of serious peril for Sunak’s premiership. With Boris Johnson’s star power among Tory MPs on the wane – just 21 Tory MPs joined him in rebelling against Sunak’s Brexit agreement – and the Prime Minister’s popularity rising, Sunak is in a stronger position than when he started. A ConservativeHome poll of Tory members found that in the past month, net satisfaction with Sunak has risen from 7 per cent to 44 per cent.

This is not yet reflected in party polling, but the working assumption in 10 Downing Street is that Labour has a lead of about 15 points. The hope is that this will tighten by the summer. ‘If I were Keir Starmer and I squandered a 30-point lead, I would be worried,’ says one optimistic government aide.

The past month is seen as a blueprint in how the rest of the year must go if the Tories are to have a chance of closing the gap. ‘The best way to attack Labour is by showing we are continuously getting on with stuff,’ says one senior government source. Rather than refusing to be drawn on the details of policy like Starmer, the Tories are planning more announcements in the coming weeks, from Sunak’s pet project of maths classes up to the age of 18 and guidelines on the teaching of trans identity in schools to the NHS workforce plan and increasing pharmacy powers. The idea is that No. 10 will do what it can to put Labour under pressure and thereby open up more possibilities for an election strategy that will secure a fifth term in power.

Key to this plan are the five priorities Sunak set out at the start of the year – to halve inflation, reduce debt, grow the economy, cut waiting lists and stop the boats. They were picked in large part because they are thought to be achievable. (With a few definitional fudges: there are no plans to reduce debt, but if it rises more slowly than GDP, he can claim the debt-to-GDP ratio is falling.) The pledge that is judged trickiest and unfudgeable – to ‘stop’ the boats – still faces many obstacles but there are some signs of success. Data for this month suggests that small boat crossings are down 17 per cent in the first three months of this year. Sunak’s deal to speed up the deportation of Albanians, who make up the largest contingent of small-boat arrivals, is showing results.

I understand that Sunak plans to declare success on his first five pledges, then reveal a new list of more ambitious pre-election pledges. The original priorities were picked in part to win back public trust. ‘People have been so fed up with the government that it’s been impossible to get a hearing,’ says one government aide. ‘The thing the public hate the most about the Tories is saying they will do things then failing to.’

‘We will get on and solve problems one by one – five, and then another five,’ says a senior minister. ‘We’ll be able to say: “Look, we have achieved what we said so you can believe the next five because we did this five.”’

There is still a long way to go for Sunak if he is to have a chance of turning the tide. But commentators who had previously resigned the Tories to a historic defeat are reassessing. Given where things were in the autumn, that’s quite something.