Is a normal mid-term blues that can be recovered, are the losses of the Tories from Tiverton and Wakefield, or a more significant assessment of Boris Johnson’s leadership?
This is the question of life or death that Tory MPs ask.
One useful point of reference is that of sociologist Peter Kellner, who helpfully outlines the three major changes to the Liberal Democrats and the smaller change to Labor, in which the Conservatives lost four seats to Mr Johnson last year.
Party chairman Oliver Dowden delivered his seemingly devastating sentence in a resignation letter saying “we can’t go on with our usual business” and saying that his supporters and he are “worried and disappointed by recent events”.
There is only a hint of Jeffrey Howe in Mr Dowden’s resignation.
He was the top minister who was extremely loyal to Thatcher until he delivered a withering resignation speech in November 1990, from which she never recovered.
Party Chairman Oliver Dowden was one of a “gang of three” future ministers – with Rishi Sunak and Robert Jenrick – who wrote an influential letter to the Times in support of Johnson’s campaign to be a leader in June 2019.
This gave Mr. Johnson momentum. All three enter his first office and all three are systematically alienated from him.
Jenrick was fired at an early change as housing minister for the obvious crime of always being too loyal to Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Dowden heard that No. 10 had given a briefing that it would be the fall if the by-elections were bad, so he wisely decided to leave on his own terms.
The prime minister, if astute, will now do what he can in Rwanda to keep the last of the Sunak troika.
If the Chancellor resigned – and his family said it was not impossible – today’s crisis for Mr Johnson would be close to disaster.
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