Narrative Shift – why did the line on Boris change so abruptly?

The question is not why it happened but why it took so long

Just over three months ago the Tories recorded a 10 point lead in a YouGov poll. Since the end of January 2021 they had led every poll bar one. The Tory conference, which took place a week before this poll, was widely seen as a success for Boris Johnson, despite a policy-free speech. Tim Shipman, of the Sunday Times, famously tweeted that “Johnson now squats like a giant toad across British politics. He has expanded the Overton window in both directions. Praising bankers and drug companies, while tight on immigration and woke history. Cheered for lauding the NHS and pro LGBT. Where does Labour find a gap?” Shipman was hardly alone in the assessment that Boris’s boosterish “cakeism” was working, politically at least, if not in reality.

Yet here we are in mid-January looking at a series of 10 point Labour leads and the PM’s personal ratings falling below the levels achieved by Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. Superficially it’s easy to explain. The outrageous attempt to stop Owen Paterson from being held accountable for corruption, at the start of November turned into a fiasco. Johnson, on the back foot, made a series of blunders including a bizarre rambling speech to the CBI (forever to be known as the “the Peppa Pig speech”). Then Partygate hit at the start of December and the deluge of stories, and increasingly ludicrous denials, have led to where we are today, with Johnson’s political future looking precarious at best.

But only in hindsight it is obvious this series of events would place Johnson in such political danger. When the Paterson story broke many seasoned pundits felt it would be a one day “Westminster bubble” story. After all Johnson has never followed the normal rules. He prorogued Parliament illegally. He pretended there was no serious issue with Northern Ireland when he presented his Brexit deal. He brushed aside the first round of wallpapergate in February 2021. He left Gavin Williamson in post after a disastrous series of cock ups, and managed to disassociate himself from those failures. He has made demonstrably untrue statements more or less every time he’s done an interview or appeared at PMQs.