WHAT are the chances, would you say, of the Conservatives losing control of Wiltshire Council at the next election?

I can’t see it happening. While their record is more depressing than impressive, there’s no sign of a co-ordinated opposition that could oust them.

Yet they must be rattled. Why else would ex-cabinet member Stuart Wheeler be mounting a challenge for the group leadership right now?

Baroness Scott has made it clear that she intends to step down, at a time of her own choosing, well before the next elections in 2021.

So why isn’t he simply waiting until she does so?

Being expelled from her inner circle must rankle. But I doubt this is just about sour grapes. Cllr Wheeler must think he has enough support to make a real fight of it.

People were justifiably disappointed by Call Me Jane’s tardy reaction to the Skripal affair and the way she referred to Salisbury as “that city”.

Maybe her Tory troops felt let down, too. Even their pet paper, the Mail on Sunday, reported on her absence from the city while she was attending the House of Lords.

But perhaps that was just the final straw.

Mr Wheeler’s leaked email to party colleagues suggests a simmering resentment within their ranks over her authoritarian style and her top team’s lack of consultation even with those who should be their strongest allies. Rank-and-file members turn out to a load of boring meetings where they get one ‘fait accompli’ after another, as he put it. They’re just lobby-fodder.

Last week I watched, via webcast, a special meeting of the snappily-titled overview and scrutiny management committee at County Hall.

It was convened in protest at the way the cabinet decided, in secret and without consultation, to close Wiltshire’s outdoor education centres. Even though a three-line whip ensured that the leadership won the day, it was an unprecedentedly revealing scene.

When Cllr Wheeler says there needs to be “a much more general conversation about how we present ourselves as Conservative councillors” what he means is that they need a better PR strategy, at the very least.

But it’s not all about PR. It’s about genuinely considering other points of view.

It does take a strong personality to force through unpopular policies. And the pursuit of popularity can lead to poor decision-making.

But is Mrs Scott now seen by some in her own party as too uncritical a follower of government diktats, showing insufficient sympathy for those at the bottom of the heap? Possibly, having been unwell and with two jobs to do, she briefly lost focus. Whatever.

Everyone who wins power loses it eventually.

She may well hang on for now, atop an organisation whose boast is that ‘everybody matters’.

But when even her backbenchers don’t believe that they matter, something’s badly wrong.

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