Boris Johnson is a reminder of traumas past – of course the public want him to go away

This is why there is no mileage for the Tories in a Johnson resurrection. People don’t want to think about the coronavirus pandemic or our departure from the EU, writes Ed Dorrell

‘He’s no longer Jolly Boris from the telly’ (AFP via Getty Images)

There is a huge irony to be found in the unedifying death throes of Boris Johnson’s Westminster life.

Johnson built a (briefly) wildly successful political career around boundless, mindless, unevidenced optimism; and yet it ends with him relitigating one of the most depressing periods in this nation’s recent history.

He might see himself as the man who broke the political mould by being the only prime minister in living memory that anyone would want to go for a pint with. But he will forever be associated, in the public mind, with a period almost nobody wants to think about: the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with our graceless departure from the EU.

If you try to bring them up with the public, as I do in focus groups every now and again, you are swiftly told that “I don’t want to think about Covid” or “I thought we got Brexit done, didn’t we?”.

This is why, I think, voters are now so roundly rejecting him. For many who voted for Johnson in 2019, and continued to support him in droves in the 18 months that followed, he is not now a figure to be hated. He is instead, something worse: a yesterday’s man. Not just any yesterday, though; a yesterday that we would almost all very much like to drop down a hole and forget ever happened.

For many of his previous supporters, Boris is still a kind of hero. But it is a hero of a particularly grim nightmare; a nightmare that is definitely worth trying to forget.

Polling for this newspaper last month demonstrates just how far his star has waned. This Savanta survey found twice as many voters want him to keep quiet as those who want him to say more on issues of the day. It reported that 44 per cent of voters want to hear less from Mr Johnson, while only 21 per cent want to hear more.

In addition, some 54 per cent of the public think the former Tory PM should quit parliament, while only 36 per cent want him to remain an MP. One polling expert I spoke to recently feels reasonably confident that this is a high-water mark for post-PM Johnson. There is no headroom in the polls for him to climb into.

My how his brand has burnt out. It is an extraordinary story. I remember running a focus group in Hartlepool in the Summer after the first lockdown in 2020. It was a few days before Johnson’s Tories won the seat from Labour in an extraordinary landslide by-election. At the time it seemed like there was nothing Labour could do to stop him.

The participants in this group, despite Britain’s sub-optimal performance in the Global Pandemic Stakes, simply couldn’t get enough of the PM. They spoke about him on first name terms, of course, but also like he was their mate. There was almost nothing you could do or say to dissuade them of his (don’t laugh) “authenticity”.

Thankfully I was wrong, and stuff soon started falling apart. Between “Partygate” and any number of misdemeanours, the great British public began to be turned off by Johnson’s bonhomie.

I also ran focus groups at the time of this story unfurling, and the anger was palpable: people felt personally let down by Johnson. Voters were – and are – cross about the Downing Street parties, but have almost no desire to revisit either the pandemic or Brexit (something Johnson should also bear in mind when he “goes on maneuvers” over the Windsor Framework).

This then is why there is exactly no mileage for the Tories in a Johnson resurrection. It’s not because people are still fuming about his terrible behaviour in office; it’s because they don’t want to think about that period of time at all.

This will be Johnson’s cross to bear. He’s no longer Jolly Boris from the telly. He is Boris Johnson, the man who was prime minister during the dark, bleak days of Covid and Brexit. And no-one wants to vote for that particular ghost from the past.

Ed Dorrell is a director at Public First