Tory MPs and Labour local election hopefuls weigh up the partygate impact

Boris Johnson is the first sitting Prime Minister to be sanctioned for breaking the law. As the news broke that he and Rishi Sunak had received fixed-penalty notices for attending a birthday gathering for the Prime Minister in June 2020, in breach of their own Covid rules, calls for the pair to resign began to pour in. They “dishonoured” the sacrifice made by the British public during the pandemic, Keir Starmer said, concluding: “They have to go.” Johnson and Sunak issued an apology last night, but have resisted calls to go. The Prime Minister told the public he now feels an “even greater sense of obligation to deliver”, while the Chancellor insisted he is “focused on delivering for the British people”.

Whether Johnson is ousted is, due to parliamentary mathematics, at this point only determinable by his Conservative peers in the Commons. Worrying for the Prime Minister, however, is that the public will have a chance to vent their anger at the ballot box next month. Although not a vote on the Prime Minister of the Conservative parliamentary party, people can give the Tories a kicking in the local elections next month. Labour candidates I spoke to last night are frantically rewriting their election literature as we speak and snap polling does not paint a pretty picture for Johnson: YouGov, Opinium and Savanta ComRes all found that a majority of people (57%, 58% and 61%) think the Prime Minister should resign. For Conservative MPs concerned about their prospects at the next general election, how the party performs on May 5th will be important as to whether they back a leadership challenge.

Even before we knew that Johnson and Sunak had received fines, however, several polls had reported that a similar proportion of people felt the Prime Minister should step down. Opinium found, when the ‘partygate’ scandal first broke last December, that 53% felt he should go, with 63% saying he was not telling the truth. Savanta ComRes reported that 54% of the public thought he should resign. Both for Labour local election hopefuls and the Tory backbenchers weighing up their own chances of survival, the extent to which partygate has already been ‘priced in’ will be crucial. People now knowing for certain about the Prime Minister’s lockdown partying what they almost certainly knew before may not have the impact Labour hopes.