Candidates’ mutiny against PM reflects voters’ wish for a better government

Confronted by Conservative voters spitting mad about Boris Johnson during the local election campaign, Tory critics of their own leader adopted a novel approach.

Rather than gritting their teeth and defending the Prime Minister, the MP rebels said they, too, wanted Mr Johnson gone – but that the council elections were the wrong way to do it.

“You don’t need to send him a message by getting rid of hardworking councillors,” they would explain. “You can rely on me to do that for you.” The fact such a message of open mutiny was considered a vote-winner with some traditional Tories underscores how the shine has rubbed off Mr Johnson.

Once, “Boris” was considered able to reach parts of the electorate no other Conservative could. In 2019, he was Mr Brexit, the key that unlocked the Red Wall to secure a whopping majority.

But this spring, Mr Johnson has a cost of living crisis and scandals piling up.

In London, a hat trick of Tory strongholds turned red as Labour took Barnet, Wandsworth and Westminster. Meanwhile, in southern seats, the Lib Dems tore chunks out of the Tories. They became the largest party in Tunbridge Wells; Somerset, too, went yellow.

Even former Tory prime ministers saw the ground shift beneath them as the Conservatives lost control of West Oxfordshire, near David Cameron, and Huntingdonshire, Sir John Major’s old seat.

The Prime Minister has an awful lot of political chips riding on his ability to keep Labour strongholds in the North and the Midlands, which he won over in 2019.

The Daily Telegraph talked to Tory MPS, councillors and activists who have knocked on doors in so-called “blue wall” Tory constituencies in recent weeks. What emerged was a picture of distinct disgruntlement.

Some concerns related to policy – historically high levels of taxation; planning reforms (now junked) making it harder to block controversial new developments; anger over sewage dumping in rivers.

Others were circumstantial – the financial squeeze as energy bills and prices soar beyond the help provided from government; the tendency of voters to whack No 10 midway through an election cycle.

And then there were self-inflicted wounds – a string of scandals from lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street to an MP watching pornography in the House of Commons.

The cumulative result is Conservatives beginning to wonder whether, in reaching for the Labour’s northern heartlands, the Johnson project is losing True Blue Tories.

“You do see people who are really f----- off with Boris,” said one disconsolate Conservative MP who had been knocking doors in Hertfordshire.

“But it is broader than him – it is the Government and the leadership as a whole.”

Once-loyal Conservatives decided to “send a message”, the MP said.

“They’re not saying ‘we don’t want a Tory Government’. They are saying ‘we want a Tory government to be better,’” the MP said.

The collapse in Mr Johnson’s political fortunes – he is the Cabinet minister with the second worst approval rating among Tory members, according to a Conservative Home survey – was reflected in how he was deployed in the campaign.

In the 113 local election adverts pushed by the Conservative Party’s Facebook account since May 1, Mr Johnson appeared in none of them.

In one leaflet, a Tory candidate in Hartlepool – site of a famous Tory by-election win just a year ago – pleaded with voters not to “punish

‘It is broader than Boris Johnson. It is the Government and the leadership as a whole’

‘In the last few days I’ve had the jokes about tractors’

‘I’ve been a Tory voter all my life but I didn’t vote. I couldn’t be bothered’

‘These people, we will be able to persuade them to come back home again, by making the right noises in the right way’

local Conservatives for the mistakes made in Westminster”.

Hundreds of other candidates dubbed themselves “local Conservatives” on campaign literature in a not-so-subtle attempt to hold their party’s Government at arms length.

Mr Johnson made just one council visit, campaigning in the South in the fortnight to polling day.

By contrast, Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, visited 14 blue wall constituencies including in Somerset, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire and Surrey, as his party plots a comeback in Westminster through Tory shires.

Lib Dem hand-outs have gleefully exploited Mr Johnson’s woes. “They broke the law … They’ve hiked taxes… They’ve taken us all for FOOLS,” read one of their leaflets. Alongside the words were photographs of Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, coloured a sickly blue. The leaflet was sent out in Elmbridge, Surrey, a seat held by Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minister.

He is one of a handful of MPS – including Steve Brine in Winchester and Chandler’s Ford, and Bim Afolami in Hitchin and Harpenden – which the party believes it can turf out at the next general election, due by 2024.

“There is a feeling that the Tories have been running these places for decades and they are being taken for granted,” said one Lib Dem strategist when asked to sum up the mood in blue wall constituencies.

The plan from Conservative high command has been to focus on policy. Tory councils “lower rates of council tax, collect bins more regularly and fix more potholes”, as one party adviser distilled the message.

But the approach has underscored the party’s Janus-faced stance on tax – claiming to be the party of low tax at a local level while raising tax nationally to its highest level in 70 years.

Yet, as campaigning in Somerset attests, local battles can become a microcosm for the wider challenges faced by a party.

Voters in the rural county wanted to know about broadband connectivity, flood defences, access to healthcare and whether more help is coming with the cost of living, according to Tories who campaigned there.

And yet in the past month, a pair of scandals involving local Tories undercut that effort. First, David Warburton, MP for Somerton and Frome, had the Tory whip removed after allegations of cocaine use and sexual advances on staff – claims he contests.

Then Neil Parish, at the time the MP for Tiverton and Honiton, was unveiled by The Telegraph as the politician seen by female colleagues watching pornography in the House of Commons.

“In the last few days I’ve had the jokes about tractors,” admitted one MP who has spent a lot of time knocking doors in Somerset.

The MP went on: “There hasn’t been a combative spirit. That means one of three things.

“Either, one: people are thinking ‘sod it, I can’t be bothered.’ Second: ‘I’m not going to vote.’ Or third: ‘I don’t want to offend you, I’m not going to vote your way.’”

Some Tories – including Ed Costello, chairman of the activist group Grassroots Conservatives – are pleased the Labour Party is being led by a lifelong lawyer rather than a more ruthless political operator.

“People know Boris. A bit of a buffoon at times but he comes up trumps when he does a Churchillian speech to the Ukrainian parliament,” Mr Costello said. “He has his moments. But he is what he is. Most people see he is a chap who is flawed, but who isn’t?

“But [Sir Keir] Starmer comes across as a prat at times. If it was [Sir Tony] Blair and not Starmer then I suspect the situation would be rather different.”

The reactions on the doorstep that have most alarmed Conservative MPS are not the ranting and raving of lifelong Tory-haters but the disappointment of party loyalists.

Outside Waitrose in Mr Cameron’s old seat in Witney, long-term Tories explained why they are disillusioned.

“I’ve been a Tory voter all my life, but I didn’t vote,” said Sue Stewart, a 63-year-old retiree. “I couldn’t be bothered.”

She said she was annoyed by Mr Johnson’s recent scandals but above all was angry about the cost of living.

Graham Idbury, another Waitrose shopper who usually ticks the Conservative box, also sat on his hands.

“Boris will definitely lose the next general election”, Mr Idbury said, “if he’s still in No 10.”

There are plenty of reasons to discount underwhelming mid-term results which were trotted out publicly by Tories in television and radio appearances yesterday.

Voters always punish governments mid-term. The financial squeeze pinched right before polling day; scandals broke at a bad time. Actually, it was not as bad as feared. But privately, party figures right up to the Cabinet admit the mood on the doorstep – including in Tory shires – was frosty towards not just the party but its leader.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say there has been background music around the PM,” one Cabinet minister said, pointing to criticisms in the “leafy suburbs” in particular.

The hope, the minister went on, is that Tory loyalists are not promising a permanent “divorce” from the party, but more a short-term fling.

“This is not 1997. These people, we will be able to persuade them to come back home again, by making the right noises in the right way.”

If that can be done, then Mr Johnson will be hoping the reveal of his legislative agenda on Tuesday at the Queen’s Speech can start the healing process.

If not, come the next election, it could be curtains.