Tories at war...Labour are the only winners
THE scale of the reversal in Boris Johnson’s political fortunes has been astonishing.
Little more than two years ago he won a historic victory in the General Election of December 2019 with an 80 seat majority.
He then went on to smash the Brexit logjam, secure a far-reaching deal with the EU and deliver British independence.
These achievements were followed by his successful response to the Covid pandemic, where he not only presided over a worldbeating vaccine programme but also struck a pragmatic approach to lockdown, balancing the needs of health protection with those of the economy.
Such was the breadth of his appeal that he seemed to be presiding over a fundamental realignment of British politics, as he dominated the Westminster landscape and seized vast swathes of traditional Labour territory.
He was the Heineken figure of our democracy, able to reach the parts of the electorate that other Tories could not.
But today, as the confidence vote makes clear, many of his own MPs – a large number of whom owe their seats to his leadership – regard him as electoral poison.
They point to recent opinion polls, which show both a consistent Labour lead and record disapproval ratings for the Prime Minister.
One memorandum circulated on the Jubilee weekend by the rebels warned that, without a change at the top, around 160 Tory MPs – almost half the Parliamentary party – are likely to be defeated at the next election.
Poll findings are backed up by real votes at the ballot box. In the spring of 2021, the Tories enjoyed a remarkable by-election triumph in Hartlepool, previously a Labour stronghold. But recent months have seen crushing defeats to the Liberal Democrats at North Shropshire and Amersham, both of which had Conservative majorities of over 23,000 at the 2019 General Election.
Similarly, the Conservatives gained council seats in the 2021 local elections, only to lose almost 500 this year.
A prime element in this mood of growing disillusion and panic has been the fallout from the Partygate scandal which led to police fines and severe official condemnation in the report of the investigation by top civil servant Sue Gray.
The fiasco could hardly have been more damaging to the Prime Minister.
At a time of national emergency, the hypocrisy of failing to abide by the Government’s own lockdown rules was bad enough. But perhaps even worse was the exposure of a culture of irresponsibility, arrogance, chaos and entitlement in Downing Street, where cleaning and security staff were treated with disdain.
Other factors have played their part, like the cost of living crisis, which has been stoked by soaring inflation and energy bills.
Many on the Tory benches feel that Johnson’s Government has worsened the problems by the adoption of misguided economic policies – like extravagant spending, tax hikes and green levies. Indeed, the tax burden is now at its highest level since the 1960s, feeding the idea the Prime Minister has betrayed traditional Conservatism.
It is a charge that is reinforced by the reluctance to challenge the woke agenda, or
‘Boris’s internal enemies are willing to plunge the Tories into a prolonged civil war’
tackle the housing crisis or effectively combat crime or establish proper border controls, with immigration currently running at over one million new arrivals a year.
For his internal enemies, these failures outweigh his achievements, such as his international leadership on the Ukrainian war or his provision of record funding for the NHS.
Bent on his removal, such opponents are willing to plunge the Tories into a prolonged civil war, characterised by vicious personal attacks of the sort that Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries made yesterday on leadership contender Jeremy Hunt over his record as Health Secretary.
The biggest beneficiaries of this discord
are Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, for it is an iron rule of British politics that voters despise badly divided parties.
That is what the Tories have become. They are making a hash of governing the country because they are increasingly ungovernable.
The smell of sulphur permanently hangs over their backbench 1922 Committee. Plotting is now their favourite activity.
In the 1950s, the Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe declared “loyalty is the Tories’ secret weapon”. But that remark now looks absurd, given the party’s addiction to internecine strife, and endless leadership contests.
Boris Johnson has huge flaws, from his chaotic management to his lack of political convictions.Yet he remains by far the biggest player in his party and its most successful campaigner.
Theresa May did her papers neatly, but was so hopeless as a leader that she almost ushered Corbyn into power.
In contrast, Johnson has made the right decisions on the issues that really count, like Brexit, Ukraine and lockdown. There is no obvious candidate to replace him.
The party will not recover its popularity with more rounds of internal conflict. It will only do so by focusing its energies on ruling the country properly. The needs of Britain must come before the vanity of the Prime Minister’s ambitious rivals.