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Just bumped into a few very senior Tory figures and this is what they told me:

1. They are preparing for more than 350 losses at Thursday's local elections. "It is going to be very grisly," one said. Expectation management aside, that is getting into quite significant numbers.

2. They expect to do better in more marginal, battleground areas where they are fighting and campaigning hard. They expect to do less well in safe areas where the local Tory parties have no tradition of having to fight for every vote. One county that keeps being mentioned in this regard is Surrey.

3. They acknowledge that UKIP is a wild card that makes predictions hard without decent data for recent council by-elections. But they expect UKIP will do well enough to send some Tory councils over the edge into no-overall-control, with the Tories potentially being forced to govern in coalition with UKIP councillors. Now there is a thought...