It’s a fair answer. There’s no doubt that Johnson has certain skills that May doesn’t have (he would be a better after dinner speaker, or better on HIGNFY). However I do think he is lacking in other areas (he’s ill disciplined, speaks in too much of an overly intellectual manner and in truth is not very empathic with people).
I could be wrong (and we will certainly see come mid December) but if the Conservative policy to rectify what went wrong in 2017 is to sub out May for Johnson, to me it’s a big mistake.
May went into that campaign far stronger than Johnson currently is. Her polling rating was higher than either Blair or Thatcher. Johnson goes in with negative numbers already. Her campaign crumbled under the pressure that was placed on her by an insurgent Corbyn, backed up by an enormous membership and a populist manifesto.
At an intellectual level, I am always struck when I speak to conservative figures at how little an analysis they have of what went wrong in 2017. Privately it concerns them too. Far more than the Blairite Labourites who are still stuck trying to argue black is white and he didn’t do well. A lot of the Conservative guys are serious people and know they need to resolve that question in some way.
To me May was a consequence of the problems, not the cause.
As a final aside, if the big plan is for Johnson to trounce Corbyn in the debates I have no idea why he is putting the idea around that Priti Patel would fill in for him. Even as someone who has some doubts he will trounce anyone in a debate (to me both May and Cameron were far better in PMQ’s than Johnson against Corbyn) or that this election is solved by them by merely changing the leader, I would say this would be a big mistake. If you subscribe to this view, it’s a catastrophic mistake and I have no idea why it’s being bandied about.
I remember in 2017 I started to say this Conservative Campaign is not going to plan. It wasn’t initially played out in the numbers but I could see it was chaotic. I get the same feeling currently. Now there are still 4-5 weeks left, still lots of time and Johnson will be more malable than May, but goodness me do they need to up their game if they want to secure a majority.
From the outside looking in it looks a bit shambolic. He should just be rinse and repeating “get Brexit done”. I’ve hardly heard that phrase. I heard one of their advisors on radio 4 the other day saying their aim during this campaign is to transform Johnson’s image into that of a One Nation Tory. He may well be, but an election campaign is not the time or place to do that. They really need a simple message, keeping it about Brexit as far as possible.
