In this week’s column, which first appeared online on Broadsheet.ie on January 17th 2022, I looked at the beleagured leadership of Boris Johnson and suggest that he may limp on until May when his fate could be sealed by a bad mid-term local election result. Meanwhile, the three Irish government party leaders will be happy that the next locals and european elections are not due here until 2024 and so they face no mid-term electoral test in 2022… except…

In politics, the things you don’t say, or hesitate over saying, can say more about what you are really thinking than the things you do say. You can hear a near textbook perfect example in a short clip from a BBC Radio Devon interview with local Tory MP, Simon Jupp. (I have the audio in the Podcast version of this piece).
Asked if he thinks Boris Johnson will still be Prime Minister and Tory Leader this time next month, Jupp – a former BBC journalist and senior Tory party communications adviser – responds with… nothing. There are three or four seconds of silence, before he finally struggles to say he probably will.
Setting aside the schadenfreude of hearing a former press officer who may in his time have scolded ministers on their dire media outings, delivering an even worse one, Jupp’s performance highlighted the scale of the peril facing Johnson.
Though he now holds what was once a safe Tory seat, Jupp was still a beneficiary of the Boris bounce in 2019 and is one of the new in-take of MPs, whose personal loyalty to Boris would be presumed. Incorrectly, it seems.
That said, Jupp may well be right. Though Johnson is clearly damaged goods and a potential liability to the Tory party, he will probably limp through the coming month, and several months after that, before the 54 letters needed to trigger a no-confidence motion are submitted to the famous 1922 Tory Backbench committee.
Continue reading “Promises to keep when you have mid-terms to avoid?”