So it was 2018 and the government was in trouble. Real trouble. In newspapers and magazines, on Dame Emily Maitlis’s Newsnight and Davina McCall’s Today programme, one question was being asked. Would anybody ever vote Conservative again?
At this stage, by-election disasters were not unexpected. The loss of Crewe and Nantwich had been on the cards for years and Enfield, although symbolic, was hardly a surprise. Fulham had been a shock. Henley all the more so.
Lord Johnson (of Henley) was particularly upset by the latter. As he said to the Radio Times, ‘to call this lot a shambles would be an insult to other shambles, such as erm…’ Although Lord Johnson couldn’t think of other shambles, not on the spot, and the rest of the interview was about his new series of Strictly Come Dancing, the quote still made the front pages. For a government in such dire straits, all news was bad news.
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