Boris Johnson Faces a Crisis Moment as PM

 “At the heart of the problem here”, said Labour Leader Keir Starmer in response to the last minute change to Christmas arrangements in the UK, “is a Prime Minister who simply doesn’t want to be unpopular and therefore won’t take the tough decisions that are necessary, until he is forced into them at the 11th hour. We can’t go on like that.”

For most people the political ramifications for Boris Johnson are likely to be a second order issue when compared to the inconvenience and in some cases heartache they now face.

But the reality is that Johnson now faces a political crisis as the attention turns to a basic question – is he actually up to being Prime Minister?

Speaking on Times Radio over the weekend the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, declared: “My view of leadership is that you've got to be two steps ahead of events...we're not prepared for the next wave of the virus."

If that is the test of leadership, which seems a fair assumption, then according to new polling by YouGov Boris Johnson is failing it.

The good news for the Government is that the UK public is broadly supportive of the policy decisions made.  

74% of those polled indicated support for establishing the new Tier 4 restrictions, with 67% of Londoners and 75% of those in the rest of the South supporting the move.  It also seems to have strong backing from across the political spectrum, with 79% of Conservative voters and 72% of Labour voters backing it.

What is more, among those polled across the country, despite the problems it has caused, 67% support the tightening up of rules around households mixing over Christmas, with just 25% opposing them.

But here comes the problem for Ministers. 61% of the public say that the Government has handled the issue of COVID-19 rules concerning Christmas badly, with 38% saying it has handled it “very badly”. Just 33% think the Government has handled the situation well.

Not surprisingly Labour voters are most critical of the Government, with 82% saying it has handled the situation badly. Whilst 54% of Conservatives said the Government has done a good job, a sizeable number, 42%, nevertheless feel it has done badly.

What does all this mean? It means that as far as the public is concerned, they have been ahead of Ministers in understanding the gravity of the public health situation and what was needed in response to it, and feel let down by the way they have led the country through the pandemic. Such a situation is never good for a Prime Minister, making this politically a dangerous moment for Boris Johnson.  As Tim Shipman, Political Editor of The Sunday Times has concluded:


“Johnson needs to recover his confidence, or his MPs will question whether someone else should be there next year.”

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