Exclusive polling reveals 30% of UK public 'couldn't be angrier' at PM amid partygate scandal

On Monday night, after the publication of Sue Gray's "update" on partygate, when the PM addressed his MPs in a large room in Portcullis House - his mood (and some of theirs) was a little bullish.

As I wrote at the time, there was a sense among some, maybe even many present that Boris Johnson could somehow survive this scandal.

Or at least he could for now.

He's back to the Boris of 2019, one MP told me. We need to move on, said another, insisting that judgement on Johnson must be reserved until the end of the police investigation. People are more interested in Ukraine and the cost of living, they said.

There is some truth to that - that I'll come back to, but overall, it felt as if perhaps the Conservative party mood that night, didn't quite reflect the public one. And that has been borne out in some exclusive polling for ITV's Peston show from Savanta Comres.

It asked the public when they would decide whether the PM had broken the rules and found that 57% had already made their minds up, and concluded that the PM had done so knowingly. Only 13% felt the need to wait for more information from Gray, and 9% for the Met.

Only 7% said they would never be convinced that Johnson had broken rules.

Among Conservative voters things look a bit better for the PM but only marginally. While a few more are prepared to wait for Gray or the Met, both groups remains a small minority while 46% have decided already that Johnson broke the rules.

The figures on how angry people are, are also fascinating. The poll let people rank their anger from 0 (completely chilled) to the fury of 10/10 and amazingly 30% of responded to agreed they couldn't be angrier, opting for the top level.

61% of folk said they were 7/10 up, with only 8% down at the calm 0 mark. 

So the polling shows that people have made their mind up, overwhelmingly thinking that Johnson has knowingly broken the rules, and are deeply angry about it.

So far, so bad for the PM.

But there is one reassuring thing for the Tory leader to grab hold of. And that is what people say when asked if different stories are important or unimportant.

As you can see in this next chart - more people do think the scandal around Downing Street parties is important than not, but people think the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, Covid and - top of the list - rising cost of living - are all more important.

So Johnson will hope to focus on them with a trip to Ukraine already this week, a Covid u-turn on mandatory jabs, and on Thursday a big push on cost of living. As Ofgem lifts the energy price cap to pile an extra £700 onto our bills, Chancellor Rishi Sunak will put forward a package of support.

The suggestion is that it will involve the universal measure of loans (or guarantees for loans) to energy companies to allow them to take £200 off bills and a targeted measure of supporting the poorest through benefits or an expanded warm homes discount funded through tax revenue.

It will be much needed - as without support the Resolution foundation estimates that the number of households in fuel stress (spending over 10% of income on energy) will treble in England overnight. The areas worst hit would be the north west, north east, plus Yorkshire and the Humber, all with more than 30% of families in fuel stress.

Johnson - who has today done a confident interview with he Sun newspaper saying he'll lead his party into another election - hopes this will focus attention away from his own scandal.

But he knows it won't make it go away.

While many backbenchers seemed more supportive of Johnson this week (with two who had told me they thought it was time for a "managed exit" suddenly publicly supporting the PM and even one letter writer tweeting his change of heart) others are not so sure.

Privately even ministers, even some in the Cabinet, say Johnson won't be leading the party into another national vote. And others are even more twitchy, with a race on between the drip drip of the confidence letters, and the drip drip of more revelations.