Is Boris Johnson’s brand of lovable roguishness now permanently tarnished?

Johnson was voted into office with a record of gaffes, lies and sackings that would have felled the career of most politicians, writes Andrew Woodcock

His image as a naughty schoolboy figure was already the settled view of a public eager to be entertained and enthused by him (Getty)

The interminable wait for Sue Gray’s report has allowed time to focus Tory MPs’ minds, and increasingly the issue they are discussing is not parties and cake, but the long-term damage to Boris Johnson as a brand.

Johnson was voted into office with a record of gaffes, lies and sackings that would have felled the career of most politicians. But when this was pointed out to Conservatives at the time, they would smile and say that you didn’t understand – all this stuff was already “priced in” and wouldn’t affect voters’ feelings for him.

Everybody knew about the scrapes Boris had gotten into and they’d decided to overlook them, was the argument. Another infidelity here or grossly offensive comment there would make no difference because his image as a naughty schoolboy figure was already the settled view of a public eager to be entertained and enthused by him.

This belief held true through Johnson’s first 18 months in Downing Street. But now Tory MPs are asking themselves, what if the Partygate scandal has “priced in” a new view of Johnson, replacing the previous one?

Regardless of whether Ms Gray points the finger of blame at the PM, they fear that a new image has taken hold in the minds of voters, of a complacent and entitled member of the elite, indifferent to the suffering of the people as he and his clique clink glasses in an endless round of drinks events during a global pandemic.

Whether fair or not, if this new image becomes cemented in the public imagination, they worry that it will prove as difficult to shake as his earlier lovable rogue persona.

Hannah Bunting, an academic at the University of Exeter, who has studied levels of public trust in politicians, argues that it could be even more firmly fixed, because it relates to their own lived experience rather than arguments in the Westminster bubble. She said: “The public have been well aware of Boris Johnson’s flaws and this didn’t dim his electoral popularity. The difference now is people can compare their actions to his when we all were in the same situation.”

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So for a Tory MP mulling over whether to send their letter to 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady, the question is not so much whether Johnson is guilty as charged but whether he is damaged goods.

If the electorate can spend years happily accepting Johnson’s flaws because their overall view is positive, once that view becomes negative, will they ever be ready to lap up his promises and plans again?

Some still hope that, once the party row has blown over, Mr Johnson can regain his lost popularity in time for an election in 2024. But others view the prospect of a two-year trudge towards the ballot box behind the banner of a man who has lost the affections of the electorate with grim horror.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor