London, (Parliament Politics Magazine) – The Chinese have a saying about it being a curse to living in interesting times. Whether the phrase is truly old or even Chinese, I believe its sentiment is something the Prime Minister would agree with, as he fights to cling on to his premiership during a torrid few months that has seen his approval rating plummet.
According to YouGov polling in April 2020 when the public were asked if the PM was doing a good job, a staggering 66 per cent said yes and just 26 per cent disagreed. This has now reversed with 69 saying he is doing a bad job and just one in four (24 per cent) disagreeing.
At the same time his net approval rating among Party members, has also collapsed. According to the Conservative Home website Mr Johnson now has a minus rating even among his usually loyal supporters, while a snap poll of party members found 55 per cent thought he should be removed. Perhaps worse still, this decline in popularity seems part of a wider trend and not a flash in the pan.
No wonder Conservative MPs seem unnerved and Government claims that this is some kind of “Remoaner plot” to remove him and was behind the no confidence vote simply won’t fly. Yes, it’s true that ahead of the vote, there were a good number of pro-EU Tory MPs who publicly called for the PM to go, but there were also a number of leading Brexiteers including Steve Baker, Andrew Bridgen and David Davis.
This was confirmed by one Brexiteer I spoke to who said the panic in No 10 was caused by the threat coming from “all sides” and his colleagues were fed up with “…partygate, a succession of tax rises that were so awful it had allowed Labour to claim it was now the Party of low taxes”, “unconservative policies” and most importantly the Boris magic that delivered a huge majority in 2019 seems to have vanished.
The latter referring to the recent by-elections in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton. Yes, it would have been inconceivable for Labour not to have won Wakefield, as they needed a fairly minor swing of around four per cent, while enjoying roughly a nine per cent swing in the national polls, however Tiverton and Honiton was a different ball game. A whopping 24,000 majority was overturned with a swing of 30 per cent.
A safe seat lost and sniffy briefings about the quality of the Conservative candidate, won’t cut it. The simple fact is Conservative and Brexit voters stayed at home in their droves as they lose patience with a Government polling suggests they see as failing to deliver.
No wonder a number of Cabinet Ministers and former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt are reportedly “on manoeuvres”.
In No 10, I am told, the PM is hoping that things will calm down over the summer, while “red meat” policies will win back some of the 149 MPs who voted against him, but this seems wishful. Cutting taxes, an extension to right to buy, ripping up the Northern Ireland Protocol, civil service reform, levelling up and a British Bill of Rights are all being promoted, but will they be enough or will they be seen as too late by his parliamentary colleagues and by Conservative voters?
Certainly, this is the medicine prescribed by politics professor Matthew Goodwin, who arguably understands the party’s support in the “red wall” seats better than anyone else, who said that only “a Policy Blitzkrieg” could reverse the PM’s fortunes. However, others are saying that it no longer about policy, or lack thereof, but about who is driving the ship of state.
For this group, they argue that bringing forward crowd pleasing policies now, is not enough to change the perception that the PM, as convivial as he might be, is so tarnished by the antics in Downing Street and a pursuit of policies that MPs from across the Conservative Party see as thoroughly unconservative that no relaunch will be enough.
As another MP explained to me yesterday, following the loss of two by-elections on the same day announcing popular policies smacks of desperation and the big question, why did the PM not do them before?
One thing seems certain however, the PM is set for a summer of discontent and I have not even spoken about industrial action on the trains, planes and potentially in schools.