'We're stuffed' Have the Tories given up on winning the next election?

Hours after last Wednesday's budget, the Conservative party's great and good assembled at the medieval Guildhall in London to hear Rishi Sunak address the 50th anniversary dinner for the Centre for Policy Studies thinktank. His party had a clear plan, the prime minister told hundreds of Tory MPS, peers, donors and other assorted luminaries: one centred on higher growth and lower taxes.

- Peter Walker and Pippa Crerar

Many of those gathered had listened in person as Jeremy Hunt unveiled another 2p (2.5 cents) cut in national insurance but failed to produce anything approximating the rabbit-from-ahat announcement that Tory MPs hoped might start shifting the polls.

Sunak's remarks were therefore greeted with scepticism, and some even raised eyebrows and politely shook heads. One attender called the event the "most opulent funeral I've ever been to".

It is not uncommon for governments to run out of energy as they approach the end of a long period in office. But the gallows humour on show that night was indicative of a mood some Tory insiders say goes further: a sense that many in the party have almost entirely given up.

Perhaps the most obvious metric for this is the running tally of MPs deciding they do not wish to stand again. Even with the general election potentially still six months or more away, of the 96 standing down so far, 61 are Conservatives.

Hunt's budget has become the latest of a succession of policy ideas to make no dent in Labour's polling lead of about 20 points. Some within the Conservatives worry that, among some MPs and advisers, a perhaps inevitable sense of ennui has become a cross between outright defeatism and a willing gallop towards the waiting abyss.

"We're stuffed," one Tory MP said after Sunak's speech last Wednesday night. A wealthy Tory donor also attending simply pondered how Labour would address his specialist policy area "when" in government.