Sleaze won't bring down Boris - by Matthew Goodwin for Unherd

We upload Professor Goodwin's latest analysis on the state of British politics and his assessment on where the major parties stand. Already, the Owen Paterson 'cash for access' scandal has blown itself out despite the media's best efforts to wring every last drop from that particular orange. In that respect the Westminster village and the rest of the country seem as far apart as ever.

But on much else people feel badly let down and the list of concerns they are worried or unhappy about is growing:

"The cost of living, dissatisfaction with how the government is managing a spiralling healthcare crisis, frustration at its inability to define and articulate how the country is being levelled-up and a general sense of confusion over what Johnson actually wants to do with the power he now has. We are nearly two years into this premiership and still it remains unanchored from any guiding philosophy or framework, drifting around with no real sense of purpose or mission."

Party managers should take note:

The effect of these wider problems is already visible. Drill into the data this week and you will find that only a little over half of the Conservative’s 2019 voters would vote again for the party at an election tomorrow. While one in 20 has jumped ship to Reform a much larger number, nearly one in three, now say they would not vote or do not know who to vote for.

These issues, rather than sleaze, are the far more pressing problems facing Johnson. Unless he gets to grips with them it is not hard to see how, much like John Major in the Nineties and Gordon Brown in the late 2000s, his premiership will go down in the history books for not only being stained by sleaze but for being a rather brief affair."

The full article can be read here with a link to the original beneath it:

Article by Matthew Goodwin for Unherd - Slease won't bring Boris down - 14.11.21.pdf

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