Sky News’ Sophy Ridge: Has a critical mass of opinion about Boris Johnson irrevocably shifted?

WEBWIRE – Wednesday, April 20, 2022

The greatest drop in living standards in the UK since records began; a David vs Goliath war in Europe with civilians shot in the streets and modern cities reduced to rubble; a global virus pandemic leaving families forced to – literally – stay at home.

It feels like a generation’s worth of tumult has been squeezed into a couple of years – as though someone has accidentally hit the fast forward button and we are living through the consequences.

It’s a cliché to step back and opine that these are unprecedented times.

What I’m interested in is the impact that these huge global events are having on the individual. It feels inevitable to me that people’s attitudes will be dramatically shifted. If the fast forward button has been hit, public opinion will also be changing at double or triple speed.

Let’s be frank: those in the “media bubble” or “Westminster bubble” haven’t always been fast enough in identifying the shifting tectonic plates of what the public actually think. Brexit, Donald Trump and even the Conservative landslide victory of 2019 took too many by surprise. 

I’m excited to be launching a new Wednesday evening programme on Sky News at 9pm to take the political temperature in these increasingly heated times. My Sunday morning interview programme, Sophy Ridge on Sunday, has always tried to get out of London to speak to voices from across the country – an important check on any Westminster bias – which we will continue to do.

In addition The Take with Sophy Ridge will introduce a weekly “focus group” – a representative and weighted panel of Sky News viewers who are geographically and politically balanced – to try and pick up the early signs of shifting public opinion. It’s a more sophisticated and representative version of the TV “vox pop”. We’ll be able to go directly to our panel for reaction to the breaking news of the day, and use their feedback to inform our interviews with politicians and decision makers.

The mid-week point is often when politics is at its most critical, so we’ll also have takes from across Westminster – interviews with government ministers plus interesting backbenchers – and we’ll be keeping a close eye on Prime Minister’s Questions showing you viewpoints you may not have spotted. Plus we’ll have analysis from Sky News’ top political team, including regular polling updates from our Deputy Political Editor Sam Coates.

In the rollercoaster of the 2020s, all the old certainties have been ripped up. Viewpoints that are so established they have lazily been treated as fact are changing rapidly.

You only have to look at the change in Rishi Sunak’s approval ratings. After a series of damaging headlines about his wife’s tax arrangements and his ownership of a US green card while Chancellor, his approval rating dropped to a low of -15 in an Opinium poll for the Observer. Only four months ago it stood at a very healthy plus 11. In Westminster the man whose path to the leadership was until recently discussed as an inevitability is now seen as a tarnished brand.

The debate around “partygate” has been another example of the fast forward politics of 2022. At the beginning of the year – a succession of carefully targeted leaks around parties in Downing Street during Covid restrictions looked like they could spell the end of Boris Johnson’s premiership. I was seriously wondering if I would return from maternity leave to a new Prime Minister.

Last week the police issued fixed penalty notices to both Boris Johnson and the Chancellor Rishi Sunak for breaking their own Covid laws by their presence at the PM’s “birthday party” in No10. They are believed to be the first sitting Prime Minister and Chancellor to be criminally sanctioned – and more £50 fines could be on the way.

And yet Boris Johnson believes he can ride it out. He has apologised to Parliament and given a plea for perspective. With a war in Europe, this is not the time for a change of leader, we’re told.

This week there was grovelling from Boris Johnson, fury from Keir Starmer and a series of Conservative MPs who spoke out to withdraw their support from the Prime Minister. But there have been many more who have publicly defended him. On Thursday Labour will table a motion to try and trigger a parliamentary investigation into whether the PM broke the ministerial code – but No10 may feel the moment of most jeopardy has passed, for now.

But, I wonder.

What will truly be the lasting public reaction to partygate? Will it all be forgotten? Or has a critical mass of opinion about Boris Johnson irrevocably shifted since his landslide majority in 2019? Has the Prime Minister saved himself – but lost the Conservatives the next election in the process?

The consensus in Westminster seems to be that Mr Johnson – political escape artist that he is – has survived (relatively) unscathed. But it wouldn’t be the first time that Westminster had got something wrong.

It’s one of the first things I’ll be trying to explore in The Take.

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