What the commentators said
Gags, digressions, flippant pop-culture allusions – the CBI speech was in many ways a standard Johnson performance, said Patrick Maguire in The Times. More unusual was the excruciating 21 seconds during which he completely lost his thread and stood at the lectern desperately shuffling his papers, muttering “forgive me”. Briefly, the nation saw him as “Tory MPs and even fellow inhabitants of No. 10 increasingly do: rudderless, floundering, badly in need of a plan”. As a senior Downing Street source put it to the BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg: “There is a lot of concern inside the building about the PM… it’s just not working.”
So is Johnson doomed? Hardly, said Paul Goodman on Conservative Home. Much of the criticism can be put down to “the resumption of normal politics, as Covid’s Narnian winter thaws”, and to the fact that he no longer has a mission as clear as “Get Brexit Done”. Despite everything, Labour is still as far as ever from establishing a consistent poll lead. There’s no point calling for Johnson to change in any case. He has always thrived on improvisation and disorder. “He needs chaos in the way others need routine.” It’s an unconventional style that has served him well, helping him appeal to “parts of the electorate other politicians can’t reach”, and he’s not going to drop it now. Tory MPs “must either get used to him or get rid of him”.
The latter option is looking more likely than it once was, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. The PM has angered many Tory factions. The “red wallers” representing former Labour seats in the North are cross about the watering down of pledges on rail infrastructure and social care; the “red corduroys” in safe southern seats are cross about the spotlight he has put on MPs’ outside earnings; and Brexit hardliners feel he’s not making the most of the UK’s new sovereignty. Others worry that their constituents are tiring of the PM’s act: “I notice they don’t call him Boris any more,” remarks one MP. “They call him Johnson.” The Conservatives have a record of ruthlessly dispatching leaders as soon as they become a drag on the party’s electoral prospects. Johnson isn’t in that zone yet, but “he is stumbling into its vicinity”.