Boris Johnson is facing a fight for political survival this month, but he will not be getting a hand from Paul Blackwell.
“I’m not voting Tory again while he’s in charge,” says the sales manager, out shopping in the southwestern town of Tiverton in Devon, where the prime minister faces a perilous parliamentary by-election later this month. “He’s a blithering clown. I usually vote for the Tories but I’ve lost faith.”
Around the corner at Tiverton’s bus station, a hub in this rural Conservative bastion, Terry, a retiree, is equally unimpressed. “He’s lied to people and he’s still doing the same now,” he says of the prime minister. “Old fashioned values have gone out of the window. There’s a lack of integrity from people at the top.”
Will he be voting Tory on June 23? He looks out over the green hills fringing the town centre: “Never again — not after all this.”
Johnson’s reputation has been battered by a scandal over parties in Downing Street during the Covid lockdowns. He now faces an economic tsunami of soaring inflation and the worst cost-of-living squeeze in a generation.
The last thing he needs is a parliamentary by-election in Tiverton and Honiton — what should be a safe seat for the Conservatives.
Just two-and-a-half years ago, Johnson led his party to an overwhelming victory in a general election, winning a parliamentary majority of 80 seats. Last year he was praised for the government’s smooth and rapid rollout of Covid vaccines.
But after a constant drip of revelations in recent months about the behavior of Johnson and his staff, while the rest of the country was subjected to a brutal lockdown, his team will be relieved if they can get through June with the prime minister still safely in his post.
The Devon by-election, triggered by the resignation of local MP Neil Parish, who says he watched online pornography in the House of Commons while trying to research tractors, has at least generated some dark humor.
Andrew Pryce, director of James Pryce Tractors in Tiverton, has become a minor media celebrity, offering expert advice on whether it is possible to confuse farm machinery with porn.
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But Pryce does not see the funny side of what has been happening in Downing Street. “I’m appalled they have been able to get away with it, I really am,” he says. “I think Boris Johnson is really lucky to be in a job still.”
Although the boundaries have changed at times, the Tiverton constituency has been Tory since the 1920s. The Conservatives’ majority there in 2019 was a whopping 24,239.
It is a sign of Johnson’s problems that the bookmakers have installed the Liberal Democrats as odds-on favourites to win the seat — a cluster of small towns and villages with the textiles town of Tiverton at its core.
Conservatives believe they can cling on in Tiverton and it is still easy to find local voters who believe the prime minister is doing a good job in trying circumstances. Lib Dem strategists say a victory is “possible” but insist it is still a long shot.
But the Conservative campaign is not helped by the fact that almost 30 Tory MPs have called for Johnson to quit, with criticism mounting on a daily basis. The prime minister
Whose leadership was questioned last month by the senior civil servant Sue Gray in her report into “partygate”, thought he had found a temporary break this weekend as the country turned its attention to the royal jubilee celebrations. However, he was booed when he arrived at St Paul’s cathedral on Friday for a thanksgiving service.
Some rebel Conservative MPs believe Johnson could face a no-confidence vote as early as the coming week: a total of 54 Tory MPs are required to write to Sir Graham Brady, chair of the backbench 1922 committee, to trigger such a vote.
Johnson’s allies say claim the rebels are approaching the magic number are misguided: “We’re not in the danger zone yet,” said one. They insist the situation is being whipped up by a handful of malcontents.
Still, it is clear that poison is running through the party’s bloodstream. “Boris Johnson erodes the institutions he’s part of,” says one normally mild-mannered Tory MP who has submitted a letter. “Anyone who gives him the benefit of the doubt gets burnt.
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He will destroy us and he doesn’t care.” The rebels believe that even if the prime minister survives the week, a defeat on June 23 in Tiverton and Honiton — and another contest in the northern Tory seat of Wakefield on the same day — would make a no-confidence vote inevitable. Source: Financial Times...
