Boris Johnson has stepped down as the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip with immediate effect, but is it a case of jumping before he was pushed? With the threat of a by-election looming over him after the Privileges Committee recommended a ten-day suspension for his conduct over partygate, it appears Johnson was not willing to gamble on the good will of his constituents to see him through.
Last year in January as a local reporter I spoke to Johnson’s constituents to see what they thought of him. This was several weeks after the partygate scandal had broken and, with the Omicron variant of Covid still spreading throughout the country, Covid was fresh on peoples’ minds.
Strikingly, of those I spoke to, few had good things to say about Johnson. One local called him ‘nonexistant’ as an MP. Another, a paramedic who had worked tirelessly through the pandemic spoke poignantly of the revelations coming out about parties at Downing Street. She said:
It’s absolutely horrendous. I was on nightshift that morning and he was having a party. You lead by example and that is no way to lead. I’m pretty sure if I was having a party at home or drinks at the ambulance station, we would all get the sack.
In terms of Johnson’s delivery as the local MP, residents in the area were hardly more complimentary. The main complaints I heard were that Johnson was hardly ever in his constituency, and had done little to champion the area. His backing of a third runway at Heathrow quickly soured relations with the large contingent of strongly opposed residents.
While local Tory politicians I spoke to were reluctant to condemn partygate, they were, nevertheless, keen to distance themselves from the scandal. They highlighted how, contrary to the party’s national reputation, the local party was capable of delivering on local issues such as school places and rubbish collections.
The voters’ cooling off for Johnson was reflected in the 2022 local election results, with the borough of Hillingdon overlapping partially with his constituency. While the local Conservative party retained control of the council, Labour had some key wins, gaining three seats off the Tories and increasing their share of the council to 43 per cent. Two of the seats Labour gained were in the former PM’s constituency. At the time, local Labour leader Peter Curling announced victoriously, ‘We have seats in Boris Johnson’s front and back yards.’
In terms of Johnson’s delivery as the local MP, residents in the area were hardly more complimentary
Fast forward a year and it appears Johnson’s popularity has hardly improved. Modelling by Britain Elects earlier this week predicted that, were an election to be held now Johnson would only have won 36.8 per cent of the vote, compared to Labour’s 48.3 per cent. Another model by Electoral Calculus gave Labour an 80 per cent chance of taking it as opposed to Johnson’s 20 per cent. A poll of Uxbridge constituents by Lord Ashcroft conducted earlier this week, meanwhile, gave Johnson 50 per cent of the vote in the constituency compared to Labour’s 33 per cent, but the sample size and weighting have thrown up questions over how reliable that result would be.
Some might argue that the odds, even nationally, were stacked against him. A YouGov poll conducted this week found that, across the country, 60 per cent thought the inquiry into whether or not Johnson misled parliament was fair. Meanwhile, 68 per cent of those surveyed thought that Johnson should resign if he was found to have intentionally misled parliament.
Johnson’s resignation from the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat has fired the starting gun on who might replace him. All signs point to the odds not being in his successor’s favour: odds published by Ladbrokes suggest there is a 89 per cent chance of Labour winning the seat versus just a 17 per cent chance that Johnson’s Tory successor clinches it.
Now that Johnson has resigned, the outcome of any by-election or general election he would have fought will remain in the realms of speculation. Whether he finds a seat more amenable to him is to be seen. However, whoever succeeds Johnson as the next Tory candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip will have a tall order to follow: their performance will undoubtedly be judged against Johnson’s legacy.
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