Tories fear the hand of history: a ‘prolonged Black Wednesday’
Opinion polls are the crudest possible barometer of what is happening in the minds of the public but it’s difficult to escape the view that Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings between them have managed to engineer a significant drop in Tory support.
It would be fair to say that this more or less their own work since Keir Starmer has hardly distinguished himself in terms of activity. It may be that as a new leader with limited experience he simply isn’t sure what is the best thing to do. Or it could be a deliberate strategy of letting the Tories continue to ignore the first law of holes.
Whichever it is, its worked for now but as with Black Wednesday in 1992 if a more sustained effort isn’t made to eject Johnson & Co before too long he doesn’t have to call an Election for 5 years and its difficult to see him facing a more significant crisis.
Some Tories are clearly on the page of thinking that if something isn’t done then things may end badly.
I’m not a fan of the Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman. Like his counterparts on other papers his reports tend to consist largely of what people he is friendly with in Westminster have told him. To be fair unlike certain BBC political correspondents he does usually manage to report several views rather than just the one No.10 wants.
In his 31st May report he covered too angles.
Firstly Johnson’s health. A Whitehall source has told Shipman that ‘He really isn’t very well. Boris is not operating as Boris’. This is the Eden/Macmillan scenario. Eden stood down after Suez and Macmillan after the Christine Keeler episode. In both cases they were said to be unwell. In both cases their handling of crisis had also been poor.
Secondly the Black Wednesday scenario. In September 1992 during a financial crisis involving (of course)Europe the Tory Chancellor was forced briefly to raise interest rates to 15%. The Tories never recovered in the polls but we had to wait until 1997 for a Labour landslide. A senior Tory has told Shipman ‘I feel like we are living through a prolonged Black Wednesday and we are now in the John Major Premiership’.
As Tory historical analogies go, that in recent times is as bad as it gets
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