Yahoo Finance One rule for us, another for the Tories: at last a Labour truth cuts through
Boris Johnson may yet survive, but each self-inflicted disaster leaves Starmer in a stronger position
“Beginning of the end for Boris?” The strapline across the front of his own Daily Telegraph answers its own question. His end was always contained in his beginning: his fatal flaws were always destined to destroy him. The questions are when, and how? Can he prolong the inevitable and defy gravity yet again?
He was not elected for his gravity. Quite the opposite, pollsters say: he was elected as the party man to lift the country’s spirits, so it is little surprise that he and his wife run a party house with showstopping £850-a-roll gold wallpaper. New babies are part of the fun: how many – seven or eight, who cares? There is a lobe in voters’ brains that likes to vote for fun: whose gang would you choose, whose party would you go to, who would you drink with in the pub? David Cameron and his gang had it: those pictures with Samantha on holiday in Cornwall, their glamorous aristocratic circle, chillaxing with video games and country suppers – and yes, let’s face it, the sheen of Eton. Why else would we elect 20 Old Etonian prime ministers? Miserable Theresa May had not a drop of fun, and plummeted. Boris Johnson has it in spades, but how much is too much?
Stories tumbled out today. Forget decorous wine and cheese, the words used to describe the alleged Downing Street party were “rat-arsed” and “raucous”; after the quizzes, secret santas and novelty Christmas jumpers, the affair reportedly went on until 2am, just yards from the PM’s office, including some of his most senior aides. No one believes the party man didn’t know, though he has denied it time and again. The Times lists six other alleged parties which took place in Downing Street while the country was under severe restrictions. Over at CCHQ, a party with Christmas hats and dancing reportedly “got so rowdy that a door was damaged”. Nothing to see here, says the Metropolitan police.
Related: Will the furore over the No 10 party be enough to burst Boris Johnson’s bubble? | Martin Kettle
That reported “mother of all hangovers” is what the Tory party is now suffering from. Voters can be contrary, and while they like a bit of fun in their politics too, they were always wiser than this reckless crew, with an instinctive precautionary principle which seems to be alien to the prime minister. For the first time a Labour slogan has landed on every lip because it’s so patently true: “One law for them, and another for the rest of us”. Even the Tory press uses it now.
At a Wednesday night focus group in Stevenage conducted by Keir Starmer’s director of strategy Deborah Mattinson, that was also the sentiment among those who voted Tory in 2019. They talked of the sacrifices they had made, of obeying the rules, at were outraged at the Downing Street shindigs – at being taken us for fools. Polling firm Savanta ComRes found that 83% of those questioned say that the public has been let down.
With Labour’s new frontbench of hardhitters such as Yvette Cooper, Wes Streeting and Lisa Nandy joining an increasingly pugnacious Rachel Reeves, they start to look formidable, and are beginning to win back credibility, according to the polling. They feel they are on a roll for the new year.
Meanwhile the Conservative backbenches rage at the Downing Street disgrace, and the usual suspects rail against the new Omicron-prompted regulations, even though they are mild compared to last winter. For the Tories, the worst is yet to come. Voters are well aware they will be hit by the national insurance rise in April, while the NHS it’s meant to revive is on a trolley in A&E as waiting lists rise sharply.
The cost-of-living crunch will deepen through the next months. Rishi Sunak seems not to know a crucial fact that Mattinson found in her research: between a third and a half of working-class voters who turned Tory in those fragile red wall seats are on universal credit, taking that £20-a-week hit. No wonder their new Tory MPs are so angry and restive, unwilling to contaminate themselves by defending Etonian revelries, lobbying corruption, crony contracts or the rest of Boris Johnson’s decadent follies. The long-held Tory fortress of North Shropshire may not fall, but MPs will anxiously count the votes likely to be lost next week against their own slender majorities.
So is this the end? Most think Johnson will limp on. The Tories are ruthless in slaughtering their own, but he still looks to most pollsters and professional observers like a better bet than Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss. And privately, Labour would rather face one of them in the next general election than have another attempt at the slippery liar who brushes up his outrageous promises so well in any campaign.
Ben Page, head of Ipsos Mori, is always ready with a bucket of icy reality. The liar’s lies were always priced in: that’s who they voted for. He says in Ipsos’ annual veracity index, distrust in politicians is at much the same low level as a year ago, no worse. Labour is neck-and-neck on voting intention now, but at the same point in 2012 Labour was 12% ahead and still lost three years later. The Tories still lead on the economy and competence, and these are the two essential metrics for victory. The country seems not to be too distressed by the high Covid death rate, full of blitz spirit, though more people have died as a result of Covid than the number of civilians killed in the blitz.
And yet, the truth of “one rule for them” has bitten hard and deep, and it’s possible people may reject the new regulations as a consequence. The PM’s ratings have slid a long way, and Keir Starmer is gradually making gains, as is Labour’s economic credibility. No one knows what his tipping point would look like.
Page always says it’s like going bankrupt: it happens slowly, and then suddenly. No one wise predicts when that suddenly might be, but Labour is in a stronger position with each new self-induced calamity that crashes out of Downing Street. Johnson’s had more than nine lives, but he’s not done quite yet.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
