Boris Johnson has 'three months to turn things around', Conservative MPs say

What is the mood in the Conservative Party this morning? One minister put it succinctly: “Extremely grim.” They said the Party had been managing expectations, telling MPs that North Shropshire was likely to go badly. “We knew we would get a kicking,” said one MP. But this result - that saw a 23,000 majority vanish - was on another level. Now Tories whose constituencies are in parts of Surrey, Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds - which are considered more traditional “blue wall” areas - are worrying about what this Lib Dem surge could mean for them in a general election.

Having visited North Shropshire last week, the result did not surprise me. Everywhere I went, I met once solidly Tory voters who told me there was no way they were backing Boris Johnson’s party this time. Unquestionably, revelations about Downing Street parties – and in particular ITV News' scoop showing how we’d been misled – proved to be a key turning point. One senior Tory told me they believed that without parties they would have held on, and stressed that one person who wasn’t to blame was the local candidate, Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst. “We made it impossible for him,” they said.

Even Cabinet sources are talking about the need to change how Downing Street operates, to end any “unforced errors”. But the Lib Dems were already buoyed about their chances in North Shropshire. One senior figure in the party had told me – much earlier – that they could win, after hearing residents fed up about local NHS issues. And this was also Owen Paterson’s seat, so at the heart of the standards’ scandal that engulfed.

Either way, it is a bruising result for Johnson – who was already the cause of anger among many of his own MPs, not only because of standards and parties, but also Covid restrictions that led to big rebellions last week. Some are discussing the end of Johnson’s tenure – but many I speak to do not think this is the right time. “Can you imagine us launching a leadership challenge while the country is facing Omicron and could end up in lockdown?” asked one MP. But that doesn’t mean everything is OK. As one minister said, there are open conversations about the idea of a different Conservative leading the party into the next election. On challenging Johnson, they said: “Not now, but he has three months in the new year to turn it around.”

Another argued that there were some things that could provide a critical blow to Johnson’s premiership.

They said: “If Lord Geidt concludes that [Johnson] misled him, then he’s finished. If it turns out he was aware or complicit in law-breaking, he’s finished. And frankly, if Omicron goes badly there is not a reservoir of goodwill to draw upon.” “He has to change and do things differently,” added a third MP. For some the timeline is shorter. This morning Sir Roger Gale argued that the next three weeks, rather than months, were critical, saying Johnson had suffered two strikes: “one more strike and he’s out”. Charles Walker MP agreed that the new year was key but that now was not the time for the party to look inwards. “It’s been an incredibly difficult two months and the prime minister has taken responsibility for that. It has got to be a better three months,” he said. “As someone who has regularly been in a different division lobby to the prime minister when it comes to Covid, it is simply not the time for colleagues to start speculating about leadership challenges. “All governments have very difficult patches and all fall behind in the opinion polls – that is the unbreakable rule of politics.”