Is this Boris' ERM moment?

Billy Horner

Well-known member
In September 1992, a few months after winning the General Election, the Conservative Party was still enjoying a lead in the opinion polls. Then, John Major's government took us crashing out of the ERM (having burnt a few billion quid in the process) in an event which became known as Black Wednesday.

The Conservative government lost its credibility and, from that moment, never recovered. Every event and policy initiative from September 1992 onwards was viewed through the prism of incompetence and a party that had been in power for too long. At the next General Election, despite a booming economy, relatively low interest rates and stable inflation, the Labour Party (led by a lawyer) swept to victory in the biggest landslide since the war.

Public confidence in this goverment's handling of the coronavirus crisis has been eroding for weeks, but the Prime Minister's personal popularity had not seemed to have been damaged. Until now.

Apparently, his approval rating has droppped 20 points in the space of a weekend and is now in negative territory. Following the disastrous press conferences held by both the PM and Cummings over the weekend, even more people now think Cummings should go than did on Friday. I would expect the next polling on public confidence in the government's handling of the crisis to fall off a cliff and for the overall opinion polls to begin to move away from the Conservatives and towards Labour.

Obviously, there are differences between 1992 and today. Back then, the government's majority was only 22 meaning it could be held to ransom by its own backbenchers. Labour had won 273 seats (and Scotland) at the previous election, rather than the 202 they are on now. Also, I don't think anyone would claim that John Major had the same charisma and cut through with the public as Boris Johnson.

But goverments tend to lose elections over a long period of time. First public trust in them erodes, then collapses and then people look at the opposition and decide whether they could do a better job. It always seems to require a 'moment'.

Could the events of the weekend prove to be Boris' ERM moment?
 
I certainly hope so. However, I think once the Brexit chaos becomes normality the Tories will wheel out someone they consider to be a safe pair of hands before the next election and pass the buck on to Johnson.

Sadly, those who know their place will swallow it all up and vote Tory, against their own interests.
 
A lot of people voted Tory in the 2019 GE to make sure that Brexit went through. In 2021 when we are trading as a nation rather than a member of a club, it might be obvious to people that we have luckily missed having to pay part (probably about 1/5) of the huge EU recovery debt.
 
Possibly. Like I say though, if things don't go quite to plan, might this now be viewed through the prism of a failing government rather than a plucky PM doing his best?
 
Possibly. Like I say though, if things don't go quite to plan, might this now be viewed through the prism of a failing government rather than a plucky PM doing his best?

Johnson -when he's condescended to show his face- has shown no pluckiness whatsoever, and if his best is being responsible for 60000 excess deaths, more than tripling the number of deaths we were initially told would be a good outcome that's a pretty damning verdict on his competence
 
I don’t think Johnson will fight the next GE, I think he’ll go before then, his inaction with Cummings will erode any authority he has within the Party and what can he do to the next MP that steps out of line when he has thus opined that the behaviour of Cummings was reasonable?

He’s not popular with other MP’s in his Party and he’s seen as a mess maker not a rebuilder, his lack of attention to detail will always be an issue and he has been tolerated due to his ability to connect to the public at large, once that support starts to erode as his mistakes comeback to haunt him there are many MP’s who will be quick to turn the knife and he hasn’t got the high level support to withstand a sustained challenge from say Sajid Javid.
 
A lot of people voted Tory in the 2019 GE to make sure that Brexit went through. In 2021 when we are trading as a nation rather than a member of a club, it might be obvious to people that we have luckily missed having to pay part (probably about 1/5) of the huge EU recovery debt.
Or, we are bankrupt, having missed being paid any of the recovery monies? And having no one to trade with because, as you say, the EU is paying off it's recovery debt.
 
Johnson -when he's condescended to show his face- has shown no pluckiness whatsoever, and if his best is being responsible for 60000 excess deaths, more than tripling the number of deaths we were initially told would be a good outcome that's a pretty damning verdict on his competence

I wasn't saying that's how I viewed him!
 
I'd expect a lot of the new Tory voters to think that sadly they were proven right and that they really are all the same, one rule for them, etc and not vote Tory in 20... well, who knows these days?

The onus then falls on the opposition to win them back, similarly to the US, where not agreeing with Trump is not in itself a reason to vote Democrat. Labour will not simply absorb those extra votes.
 
Some very good posts on this thread.

It’s a complicated equation. I think there will be a few million who had background doubts about Johnson but backed him because of Brexit and his ‘everybody's favourite uncle’ act.

However he has had a complete nightmare since winning the election and I think it will be hard to regain the trust he has lost. I also think he will be moved out by the 1922 crew for a more traditional Tory leader.

But Labour will have to be on top of their game to mop up the swing votes, it’s a great opportunity for Starmer.
 
If Labour want to really compete with the Conservatives at the next election, they need to improve the press and social media footprint.

They need to get the message out. They need to be able to fully attack the conservatives and their ideology which is not in the best interests of the nation. They need to get their own ideas out, sensibly pointing out how they will improve the country.

They need to get every member of the party on side, they have to stop shooting themselves in the foot.

They failed this time partly because the Brexit message was not clear, partly because they allowed the anti-semitism/terrorist sympathiser to play out and partly because they were too ambitious with the manifesto.

Ultimately the brexit mess killed the vote, the grown up approach did not work because too many of the electorate behave so childishly.
 
Once the Coronavirus crisis is over (or at least under control), the government still faces enormous challenges in terms of a deep and lengthy recession, agreeing a trade deal with the EU (or gambling on the economic damage of no deal) and trying to deliver on their levelling up agenda for northern towns. There will, of course, be other events that will come along which are impossible to predict.

These things are unlikely to go smoothly. The government will be reliant on public support and goodwill along the way.

If they have lost that public trust already, then every problem will become a crisis. Every story about a minister’s personal life will become a scandal. Every policy change will become a humiliating u-turn.

It’s true that Labour has to seize the opportunity and look like a government in waiting (they’ve made a decent start). But I’ve always believed that governments lose elections rather than oppositions winning them.
 
There was an interesting contribution from Joe Twyman of Deltapoll on yesterday’s Newsnight. He said that for every Black Wednesday that are turning points in British politics, there are a dozen ‘petrol crises’ (in 2001), which look damaging at the time but are only really talking points in the long-term.

As you might expect, he said it was far too early to tell in this instance. He did think, however, that a lot of the early polling data shows this issue has much greater cut through with the public than most things in the Westminster bubble.
 
Billy, there is massive interest in this outside of people who follow politics because this crisis has effected us all. This will not just go away until Cummings or Johnson are gone.
 
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