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Johnson\u2019s reputation was tainted by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. | Andy Rain\/EFE via EPA<\/p>\nJohnson\u2019s reputation was tainted by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. | Andy Rain\/EFE via EPA<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of Conservatives have finally woken up to the fact that he\u2019s as much a liability as he is an asset,\u201d said Bale, citing Partygate\u2019s unpopularity. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t, at the moment, appear to many people to be the solution to the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pollster Joe Twyman highlighted how Johnson divided Tory members even as his legacy \u201ccast a shadow\u201d over the party.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Conservatives have with Boris Johnson what I would describe as a \u2018Life of Brian\u2019 problem,\u201d the Deltapoll co-founder said, referring to the famous Monty Python film.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThere is a proportion of its supporters, particularly its members, and also some of its MPs, who believe that Boris Johnson is the messiah, and there\u2019s another group of, particularly MPs and, to a lesser extent, supporters and members who believe he\u2019s not the messiah, he\u2019s a very naughty boy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Not everyone is sold on Johnson\u2019s actual policy record, either. His premiership saw net migration surge from 254,000 in 2021 to 634,000 in 2022 \u2014 a move critics on the right are dubbing the \u201cBoriswave<\/a>.\u201d Tory frontbencher Priti Patel\u2019s recent attempts to defend<\/a> her party\u2019s approach to border control under Johnson didn\u2019t go down well.<\/p>\n \u201cThe perception is that we didn\u2019t control immigration,\u201d Goodwill admitted. \u201cThe challenge is to ensure that we are training enough people to do the jobs that people need skills to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johnson\u2019s reputation was tainted by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. | Andy Rain\/EFE via EPA \u201cA lot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[768,5109,802,1193,2311,38401,33,393,728,33190,40,6084,1197,1198,8175,38402,6657,3739,12,384,5111,38403,46,20984,48,5112,23422,38404,22793,2824,16,657,15,17288,6507,1202],"class_list":{"0":"post-78536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-borders","10":"tag-boris-johnson","11":"tag-brexit","12":"tag-british-politics","13":"tag-climate-change","14":"tag-cop26","15":"tag-elections","16":"tag-england","17":"tag-environment","18":"tag-health-professionals-workforce","19":"tag-immigration","20":"tag-infrastructure","21":"tag-investment","22":"tag-kemi-badenoch","23":"tag-labor","24":"tag-martin-vickers","25":"tag-migration","26":"tag-net-zero","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-nigel-farage","29":"tag-parliament","30":"tag-partygate","31":"tag-policy","32":"tag-priti-patel","33":"tag-rights","34":"tag-rishi-sunak","35":"tag-roads","36":"tag-robert-goodwill","37":"tag-skills","38":"tag-tanks","39":"tag-uk","40":"tag-ukraine","41":"tag-united-kingdom","42":"tag-vaccines","43":"tag-water","44":"tag-westminster-bubble"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}