What Boris Johnson must do at the Conservative Party conference

The prime minister is at the height of his powers but dark clouds lie ahead. He’ll have to steady his backbenchers’ nerves, avoid Brexit and prove to loyal voters he still cares, writes Andrew Woodcock

He’ll have to prove to loyal voters that he still cares... and not mention the B-word (PA)

Boris Johnson arrives at the Conservative conference today at the height of his powers. He has delivered a Brexit deal and weathered the Covid storm while maintaining a comfortable lead over Labour and completing a cabinet reshuffle that tightened his grip over his MPs. But there are four things he needs to do at his party’s conference in Manchester.

1. Steady nerves

Tories will arrive in Manchester in a jittery mood, with TV screens filled with images of long queues at petrol stations and headlines screaming of a loss of confidence in police after the murder of Sarah Everard. Looking ahead, we will see a £20-per-week cut to universal credit, a 1.25 per cent hike to national insurance and continued uncertainty over whether shortages of HGV drivers will wreck Christmas.

On all of these issues, backbench MPs are anxious over the prime minister’s apparent inability to reassure the nation and send out a clear, firm message that shows he is in charge. There was frustration that the PM was invisible for much of the petrol crisis and that his comments about panic-buying appeared to amount to blaming the voters. Now they want Johnson to use the conference as an opportunity to show that he is grasping the issues, leading from the front and doing what he can to persuade voters that the difficulties they face will be temporary.

2. Change the conversation

After almost two years in which everyone has been fixed on Covid-19, the prime minister is keen to turn the page. He is all too aware that any “vaccine boost” currently buoying his position in the polls will almost certainly have dissipated by the time a general election comes around, expected to happen in 2023.

When that poll comes, he will be judged not on his record on Covid – which is likely already to be under question in the public inquiry due to begin next year – but whether he has delivered on his 2019 promises to make the UK more united and to “level up” disadvantaged areas so they can share in the prosperity of London and the southeast.

Under the slogan “build back better,” the conference will be dominated by promises of investment and improvement for all parts of the UK, in the hope of persuading the Labour voters who switched to Tory in the Red Wall seats of the north and Midlands that they are getting something in return for lending him their support.

3. Show his own side some love

Mr Johnson also knows he cannot afford to neglect the traditional Tory voters who turn out election after election in the true blue shires to support his party. Their faith has been shaken over the last few years by the prime minister’s divergence from long-standing Conservative principles of low taxes and sound money, viewing with horror the near-unimaginable scale of state borrowing built up during the Covid pandemic and levels of taxation not seen since the Second World War.

Many have been discomforted by the prime minister’s apparent hostility to pillars of the establishment, like the courts and the BBC, and his recklessness with the union between the four nations of the UK. Others are disgruntled that his focus on the red wall has forced them down the list of his priorities.

The by-election loss of Chesham and Amersham made it clear to Mr Johnson that these people cannot be taken for granted, and that the Liberal Democrats are campaigning hard in what they gleefully refer to as the blue wall, looking to make gains. Expect the prime minister to use the conference to try to show his party’s hardcore supporters that he has not forgotten them and that they have much to gain by staying true.

4. Avoid the B-word

After making “getting Brexit done” his proudest boast in 2019, Mr Johnson has all but banished the word from the vocabulary of his senior ministers. As evidence accumulates of the disruption caused by EU withdrawal – from seafood producers unable to sell into continental markets to supermarkets running out of food – the vow of silence is a sure sign of awareness at the top of government that all is not going to plan.

Other than a few weeks’ headstart over the EU on its vaccination programme, the UK has seen little in the way of material benefits which the PM can point to from his government’s project. Trade deals have largely replicated arrangements already available as an EU member and the arrival of Joe Biden as US president has sounded the death knell for any prospect of an early trans-Atlantic agreement. Travellers returning to the airports after Covid restrictions are having to grapple with longer queues at immigration, the return of roaming charges for phones and a 90-day limit on stays in Europe.

A recent poll found that just 18 per cent of Britons think Brexit is going well, compared to 53 per cent who say it is going badly. Getting Brexit done may have provided the prime minister with a path to No 10 but, having served that purpose, it appears he is hoping it can be consigned to the past.