Ed Miliband never convinced the public to move on. Can Boris Johnson?

Voters struggle to move on when a leader’s character is in question, argues Kate Devlin

Boris Johnson is still licking his wounds after narrowly avoiding being ousted from Downing Street by his own MPs.

He can at least take some comfort from the fact that the comparisons between his own turmoil and the difficulties suffered by Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, who were both eventually hounded from office by the Tory party, are often wide of the mark.

Unfortunately for the prime minister, there remains one political comparison he will not be pleased about: that with Ed Miliband.

Allies of the prime minister are keen to insist that their man is in a very different situation from those of the Tory leaders who came before him. Unlike Thatcher, he is not more than a decade into his prime ministership and refusing to see the writing on the wall. Unlike May, he is not facing an intractable policy problem that completely jams his programme of government – and he has not just lost his party its governing majority.

Allies also point to his different character. This is a prime minister who is nimble and quick-footed, they say, who will be able to drive through the policy changes needed to win over some of the rebel MPs – though his reflexes perhaps need to be faster, if the muted response to Thursday’s speech on housing is anything to go by.

On the other hand, the problem the prime minister has is that this is not simply an ideological clash within his party that can be solved by a series of policy pledges. It is about principles, many of the rebels insist. Or, to put it another way: reputations are hard won, and easily lost.

Months into his leadership of the Labour Party, aides to Ed Miliband were shocked by the reception he received on a radio phone-in. As political grillings go, the event had been seen as likely to be on the lighter side.

Miliband was appearing on a lunchtime call-in on BBC Radio 2, hosted by Jeremy Vine. The result was a mauling. Few callers wanted to talk about Labour’s platform for government or its policy plans. Instead they wanted to talk about his private life, and, especially, about David Miliband. At one point a caller named Darren asked: “What chance do I stand as a person in the country if you’re quite happy to tread all over your brother?”

Never mind policies; voters’ indelible impression of Miliband was that he was the kind of man prepared to stand for a job supposedly earmarked for his older brother.

A large number of Tory rebels are convinced that many voters now see Johnson as the kind of man who presided over parties in Downing Street while they were banned from visiting their dying relatives in hospital. And, they argue, that’s not going to change just because the prime minister keeps boosterishly encouraging everyone to “move on”.