Is Boris Johnson becoming a ‘liability’ for the Conservatives?

Boris Johnson has “one more strike and he’s out”, a Conservative MP has warned amid growing rumblings of rebellion following the party’s shock defeat in the North Shropshire by-election.

Liberal Democrats candidate Helen Morgan overturned a Conservative majority of 22,949 to claim a victory “described by independent pollsters as a political earthquake that measured ‘8.5 out of ten’ on the Richter scale”, said The Times.

According to the paper, the prime minister is “facing questions over his leadership of the party” as insiders blame the loss of what “was previously an ultra-safe Conservative seat” on recent claims about lockdown-breaching parties at Downing Street last Christmas and the lingering sleaze scandal.

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‘Electoral trouble’

The North Shropshire seat had been held by the Tories “for all but two of the past 189 years” before the resignation of Owen Paterson for a “serious” breach of lobbying rules triggered the by-election, said The Guardian.

The Lib Dems’ Morgan had previously “fought the seat in 2019 and came third, with 10% support”, the paper continued. But following “a disastrous few weeks” for Johnson, she won yesterday’s vote by a margin of almost 6,000 – a 34% swing.

In a victory speech directed at Johnson, Morgan said: “Instead of taking action to support Shropshire’s farmers, you spend your time misleading the nation on how you and your office partied during lockdown.

“Tonight the people of North Shropshire have said enough is enough. They have said that you are unfit to lead and that they want a change.”

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, currently isolating with Covid-19, heralded the win as “a watershed moment in our politics” that “offers hope to people around the country that a brighter future is possible”.

The loss of the safe seat brings to an end “a miserable story for the Tories”, said Politico London Playbook’s Esther Webber. The party “arguably brought the contest on themselves through an unforced and massive error of judgement, only to see themselves punished in the polls amid a series of damaging stories about rule-breaking Christmas parties”.

Pollster James Johnson told the news site that the “very significant” defeat was “a sign the Conservatives may genuinely be in electoral trouble”.

By-elections “often get hyped up”, he added, but the “result crystallises the brand-changing impact” that the last few weeks have had and shows “a very different world as far as public opinion is concerned”.

The constituency voted Leave in the 2016 referendum, which is “at odds with the Lib Dems, who became synonymous with the Remain vote”, said The Telegraph.

Tory MP Roger Gale told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning that North Shropshire by-election result should be seen as a “referendum” on Johnson.

“The electorate wanted to send a very clear message to Downing Street that they were dissatisfied with the management of this government,” he said. “I think this has to be seen as a referendum on the prime minister’s performance and I think that the prime minister is now in last orders time.

“Two strikes already, one earlier this week in the vote in the Commons and now this. One more strike and he's out.”

Asset or liability

The question echoing around the corridors of Westminster now is whether the PM remains “an electoral asset” or is “becoming a liability” for his party, according to The Telegraph’s associate editor Gordon Rayner.

His “ability to win elections” secured the leadership for Johnson, who was branded “the Heineken politician as he reached the parts other Tories could not reach”, Rayner continued. But now some backbenchers are asking whether he “will cost them their jobs if he leads the party into the next general election”.

“It’s frequently said that Johnson’s relationship with the Tory party is transactional,” said The New Statesman’s political editor Stephen Bush. And “it’s true to say that outside of a core of longtime loyalists”, most Conservative MPs “don’t really have a developed theory of why Johnson wins them elections”.

So “the most important short term consequence of this by-election”, Bush wrote, is that “Johnson’s already fragile political position is weaker still”.

In a further blow to the PM, The Guardian reported yesterday that multiple sources claim he “joined No. 10 staff for a party in Downing Street during the first lockdown in May last year”. The allegations raises “questions about whether there was a culture of flouting the rules over a number of months”, said the paper.

Summing up the challenges facing Johnson, Politico’s Webber said the PM is heading into “the Christmas recess with Omicron surging, most of the country in self-imposed lockdown and his MPs fuming”.

But following yesterday’s by-election defeat, “at least he has one fewer of them to deal with”, she added.