What Boris Johnson’s defeat in North Shropshire means for PM’s future, Tory ‘red wall’ MPs and levelling up – Justine Greening

For anyone involved with the Conservative Party, it was a shocking result. Losing a previously safe seat so heavily with a 34 per cent swing against them means Conservative MPs have a lot to think about as they go into their Christmas recess break.

North Shropshire by-election: Lib Dems crush Tories in hammer blow for Boris Johnson

I completely understand the frustration of MPs with the Prime Minister and his Number 10 Downing Street operation.

There have been catastrophic miscalculations on how to deal with the damning Parliamentary report on Owen Paterson’s breach of lobbying rules, and that lack of grip has continued with a series of ‘partygate’ scandals showing a leadership that sets the rules but fails to follow them itself.

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In the wider party, Boris Johnson’s authority to lead comes not from sheer ability to persuade Parliamentary colleagues he can win and deliver change on the ground.

For his MPs, Mr Johnson is now not doing enough of either. It’s a bewildering turnaround from his landslide election result of almost exactly two years ago in December 2019.

The by-election result piles the pressure on the Prime Minister. Many MPs will place the party’s current electoral woes at his feet, but it’s not as simple as that.

Of course Mr Johnson needs to up his game running his Ministerial team across Government.

He is a good-time Prime Minister in effectively a ‘Covid’ war-time situation.

And being Prime Minister is ve1ry different to being Mayor of London.

Running the Cabinet means leading a team of ambitious colleagues, most of whom want a crack at the top job, not just a team of expert officials in City Hall.

Mr Johnson has proved insufficiently adept enough at corralling his Cabinet colleagues to perform.

But the Conservative Parliamentary Party sorely needs to up its game too.

Firstly, because Mr Johnson is very much their man.

Conservative MPs overwhelmingly backed Mr Johnson as leader and as Prime Minister in the 2019 general election.

Without him there would have been far fewer Red Wall Conservative seats and probably no Conservative landslide.

He’s their man. He is there because of them. And they are there because of him.

The Conservative Parliamentary Party has been recreated in Boris Johnson’s image. So Conservative MPs must realise that in debating Boris Johnson’s future, they are also effectively debating their own.

If they want a leadership contest there will be a similar clarion call for a wider public to have their choice too, through a general election.

Secondly, voters are also rejecting a divided Conservative Parliamentary party that now argues with itself as much as with its opponents.

I’ve lost count of the many factional “Research Groups” of MPs – for Covid, China, Europe and more besides.

It risks presenting a picture to the outside public of a party that isn’t collectively sure what it stands for any more.

It feels like the Ghost of Conservative Christmas’s past.

There is libertarian wing railing against Covid passes, the One Nation wing wanting a centrist approach and an end to culture wars, the Thatcherite wing concerned over Johnson’s high spend, high tax state and more besides.

They all believe they are the beating heart of the real Conservative Party. They can’t all be right.

An inability to sing from the same political hymn sheet is costly for any political party, but especially for one in Government and at a time of national crisis.

We are all getting to the end of an exceptionally challenging year.

But in 2022, the priority is for the Conservative Party in Government to demonstrate a clear sense of purpose for our country.

That purpose must be levelling up. It is one thing that can unite the Conservative Party’s very broad church.

The long awaited Levelling Up White Paper will be published in early 2022.

It will be a pivotal moment when the party must reset.

Conservative MPs must urgently find common ground on levelling up to be able to work together, not in cliques, rather to lead and govern as a united team.

It must start delivering. No other debates should be allowed to get in the way of that common purpose of achieving equality of opportunity.

If this Conservative government with its 80 seat majority cannot take this huge opportunity to change our country for the better, then Labour is finally looking like a credible opposition preparing to do so instead. Sir Keir Starmer’s reshuffled front bench is starting to perform.

Conservative MPs may be frustrated with the leadership of the Prime Minister.

The North Shropshire result shows that a large swaithe of the electorate shares that frustration.

But the wider country is also disinterested in the inner debates of a political party in Government.

They voted Boris Johnson’s Conservatives into power to level up Britain, with better and fairer prospects for all and that is what they expect to see delivered.

Fundamentally, in 2022, it is the Conservative Party’s collective ability to level up Britain that is make or break for it’s future, much more than any by-election result.

* Justine Greening was a Cabinet minister under David Cameron and Theresa May. She was born in Rotherham.

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