Boris Johnson has been branded the “Conservative Corbyn” in a party memo ahead of a vote of confidence in his leadership of the Tories.
“Boris Johnson is no longer an electoral asset and, if left in post, will lead the party to a substantial defeat in 2024,” reads the memo being circulated by Tory parliamentarians who have now triggered a vote of confidence on his party leadership — and, by extension, his role as Prime Minister.
“He will lose Red Wall seats (with majorities under 10,000) to Labour, and Blue Wall seats (majorities up to 20,000) to the Liberal Democrats,” the memo argues, referring to Brexit-supporting post-industrial areas in what were once strongholds of the Labour Party, whose traditional colour is red, who flipped Tory in 2019, as well as the Tories’ own more middle-class, rural heartlands.
“At least 160 MPs are at risk,” the memo adds.
“The damage done to trust in Boris Johnson is such that popular policies are falling flat with the public (e.g. cost of living measures). A pollster has dubbed him the ‘Conservative Corbyn’ because of this,” the memo warns, referring to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose hard-left, anti-British public image contributed to Johnson winning the first substantial Conservative Party majority in the House of Commons since the 1980s in the first place.
Johnson is facing a confidence vote due to the fact that over 15 per cent of Conservative Parliamentary Party members have now written to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, which represents Tory MPs who do not hold government positions, expressing a lack of faith in his leadership.
The vote, announced on Monday morning, is to be completed extremely quickly, with the Prime Minister expected to know his fate as early as Monday evening.
Issues including the interminable ‘partygate’ scandal, hinging on accusations that the Prime Minister and others in Downing Street broke the lockdown rules they themselves imposed on the nation at large and a negative approval rating among respondents to a recent ConservativeHome survey have contributed to the challenge.
There is also a perception among Red Wall MPs and voters that Johnson is breaking his promises on controlling immigration, although this has received less emphasis from the mainstream media than other complaints about his leadership.
“A Conservative prime minister being booed by people who turned up to witness people arriving for a service in honour of the Queen is pretty dire,” remarked one Conservative MP quoted by The Times.
“When you’ve lost the royalists, and a lot of them will be former service personnel, that’s our core vote,” they added, perhaps casting some doubt on the idea that a Tory leader being booed in Britain’s predominantly left-liberal multicultural capital is nothing too out of the ordinary, given the circumstances.
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