Boris Johnson has badly let down lifelong Conservative members, who now want him out - Andrew Vine

A CONVERSATION with some friends who are lifelong Conservative Party members and activists left me sorry for them.

These are the most decent of people, honest, thoughtful, kind and concerned for their country, and they have been badly let down.

A Prime Minister they wholeheartedly believed would be good for Britain and its people has instead left them deeply disillusioned and feeling duped.

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Boris Johnson’s dishonesty, shiftiness and untrustworthiness falls so far short of their own standards of behaviour that only two years after being overjoyed at his election, they now cannot abide him and are kicking themselves at not seeing his flaws much sooner.

Boris Johnson. Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images.Boris Johnson. Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images.
Boris Johnson. Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images.

They hope that sometime in the next week or two, Tory MPs will pass a vote of no confidence in Mr Johnson so that he can be dumped from office and the Government can make a fresh start.

Their own confidence in him is shattered, and it is Conservatives like them who represent Mr Johnson’s greatest problem. If people like these have lost all faith in him, the Prime Minister is finished as an electoral force.

It is now unthinkable that red wall voters here in the North would once again put their trust in Mr Johnson, or give him the benefit of the doubt after the scandal of lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street whilst the rest of the country obeyed the rules. There was a touch of political genius in the way Mr Johnson, a son of privilege, managed to persuade voters in places such as Wakefield and Dewsbury that he understood their concerns, despite his own background being radically different from the majority of people in these traditionally Labour-supporting areas.

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His supposed understanding of their values and standards of behaviour now stands exposed as the most cynical of con-tricks.

A Prime Minister who had the same standards of honesty as voters in the industrial heartlands of Yorkshire would not have joined a jolly in his garden around tables loaded with food and drink whilst people were unable to visit dying relatives in hospitals or care homes.

For a man who has always been a master of public relations and projecting a likeable image, Mr Johnson has made the most spectacular hash of attempting to squirm away from accepting responsibility for the culture that flourished under his own roof.

He insults the nation’s intelligence with his absurd insistence that the May 2020 party in Downing Street’s garden was a work event, and the strong-arming of Ministers into parroting this line on his behalf has dragged them into the gutter alongside him.

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No wonder Tory MPs are furious and besieged by emails from constituents angry at being taken for fools by a Prime Minister whose only real regret appears to be over getting caught out. We do not yet know if he lied to the Commons over what he knew about the party in advance, but in everything he has said and done there is the clear sense that Mr Johnson appears to believe he can do what he likes without regard to normal standards of honesty and integrity.

The culture of any organisation is set by its boss, and so it is with the Government. If people have been disgusted by the Prime Minister’s dishonesty, they cannot then have been surprised at the unpleasant allegations of blackmail levelled at whips leaning on MPs to support Mr Johnson.

It remains to be seen whether the allegations are justified – or even if they reach the threshold of prosecution.

The allegation by former Transport Minister Nusrat Ghani that she was told her Muslim faith was a factor in her sacking in 2020 – a claim vehemently denied by Conservative chief whip Mark Spencer – only adds to the sense of a Government in crisis.

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So do some of the ridiculous policy announcements designed to divert attention away from the scandals, such as the idea of illegal immigrants being moved to Ghana, a notion quickly ridiculed by that country. There is an end-of-days feel to all this, of a Prime Minister and those around him heading for a spectacular fall, which is extraordinary given that it is only a little more than two years since a landslide election victory.

If Mr Johnson does go, his successor faces an uphill task in convincing the country that the Tories have not run out of steam and credibility.

Rebuilding trust will be the hardest of tasks, and involve repudiating Mr Johnson’s behaviour, not only in relation to lockdown parties at number 10, but over sleaze and the murkiness about how refurbishments to his flat were paid for.

This sort of behaviour is not what my friends campaigned for. It is not how they, and millions of others, whatever their political affiliation, behave or conduct their lives.

Mr Johnson somehow doesn’t seem to understand this, which is perhaps the fatal flaw that his own MPs will not tolerate for much longer.