(Bloomberg) — Boris Johnson says it’s time to move on from “partygate” and that he won’t “spend a second more talking about that stuff.” The drip-drip of Conservative MPs still calling for his resignation suggests he may not find it so easy to consign his troubles to the past.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Civil servant Sue Gray’s probe into illegal pandemic parties contained no smoking gun when it was published last week, and an immediate attempt to oust the prime minister did not materialize.
But the tales of rule-breaking soured the mood among his MPs, many of whom were already fed up with what they see as a string of unforced errors and U-turns. Johnson’s chaotic leadership style has effectively left piles of kindling around Westminster and one spark might be enough to send the whole thing up in flames.
Read more: Johnson Under Threat: How U.K. Tories Get Rid of Their Leaders
Here are some of the dangers:
The Party’s Mood Is Dire
The Tory reaction to partygate shows there is no collective view on Johnson among the party’s 359 MPs. His allies regard the scandal as contrived by the opposition, and talk of the prime minister getting the “big decisions” correct on the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
On the flip side, some regard Johnson as a disgrace and 26 have publicly called on him to quit. It’s a number that is growing slowly but persistently, while there are others who have questioned his position but not called for him to resign — at least not in public.
Read more: Ex-Attorney General Adds to Tory Calls for Boris Johnson to Quit
It’s not just partygate. Some Tories are angry at being asked to defend the government’s policies, only for the position to be reversed only hours later. Johnson’s botched attempt last year to save a Conservative MP — who was found to have broken ethics rules — continues to undermine him.
Divisions on Cost of Living
Johnson’s response to the UK’s cost-of-living crisis offers a snapshot of how Tory MPs differ in their reasons for objecting to his leadership. A £15 billion ($19 billion) support package announced 24 hours after Gray’s report was seen by many as imperative to tackle the squeeze on living standards.
Yet traditional pro-business Tories accused Johnson of abandoning party principles by imposing a windfall tax on oil and gas companies, and jeopardizing what they see as the Conservative claim on economic competence. The decision came days after Tory MPs had been ordered to oppose the measure when it was put forward by the opposition Labour Party.
The debate feeds into Tory criticism that it’s not clear what Johnson and his government stands for — he talks about being a fiscal conservative and raised taxes to their highest level in decades.
Voters Get Their Say
The two parliamentary elections — both triggered by sex scandals involving the sitting Conservative MP — on June 23 loom large for Johnson. Opinion polls show the Tories at risk of handing the former “Labour red wall” seat of Wakefield, West Yorkshire back to the opposition party.
Meanwhile the traditional Tory “blue wall” seat of Tiverton and Honiton, southwest England is being strongly contested by the Liberal Democrats. Defeat there would bolster the view of MPs in similar seats that Johnson’s focus on the North is coming at the expense of traditional Conservative constituencies.
Losing both so soon after a local election drubbing would undermine the view that Johnson is still the party’s best bet to fight the next general election, expected in 2024.
The latest YouGov model shows that if that election was held today, Johnson would probably lose his own seat to Labour while the Tories would hold just three of 88 so-called battleground seats — the ones that swung from Labour in 2019 and those they hold with a majority of less than 15 percentage points.
Confidence Votes Can Change Things Quickly
For now, the question is whether the rebels can muster enough support to trigger a no-confidence vote — it requires 54 to trigger one — and they are a long way from the 180 votes required to oust the prime minister. But much can change between a no-confidence vote being called and the votes being cast.
If a Tory heavyweight such as Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak or Foreign Secretary Liz Truss makes clear they’ll go for the top job the dynamic could change quickly. Winning the vote would — in theory — leave Johnson immune from another such contest for a year. But it’s no guarantee of safety: his predecessor, Theresa May, won a confidence vote in December 2018 yet was still out of Downing Street months later as the Tory party tore itself apart over Brexit.
…And Partygate Is Still Rumbling On
Johnson refused to quit even after became the first sitting prime minister found to have broken the law. So after Gray’s report turned up little that wasn’t already in the public domain, he was determined to move on.
But Gray didn’t investigate the so-called Abba party, for example, which allegedly took place in Johnson’s flat and included his wife and special advisers on the night the prime minister’s controversial aide Dominic Cummings left his job. On Monday, Johnson’s spokesman refused to deny there was another — as yet not investigated — party in the apartment on the premier’s birthday in 2020, hours after the event for which he was fined along with Sunak.
A parliamentary committee is now investigating whether Johnson deliberately misled MPs over the parties, an offense which would normally merit his resignation. The committee is not expected to report until October at the earliest. That could be just as the Conservative Party gathers for its annual conference.
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
