Tory MPs: don’t blame Boris for these by-elections

The partygate scandal has left a long hangover. Westminster is waking up to the news that Tory seats in both the ‘red’ and ‘blue wall’ have fallen respectively to the Lib Dems and Labour. In true form, Sir Ed Davey is claiming the Tiverton result is the ‘biggest by-election victory we’ve ever seen’ (it wasn’t) while it transpires that harping on about Harold Shipman in Wakefield isn’t a good strategy for holding a northern marginal either. Oliver Dowden, the Conservative party co-chair, has already bit the bullet this morning by resigning – but there’s one person who definitely isn’t to blame according to some of his colleagues: Boris Johnson.

Already the more stringent Boris backers are lining up behind the man they call ‘the boss’ to claim that Johnson’s recent woes had absolutely nothing to do with the two stonking defeats. Early out the blocks was Michael Fabricant, the sage of Staffordshire.