Boris Johnson is a man under fire. The shelling began when the press revealed the British prime minister allegedly took part in a do in his Downing Street garden as the country was under Covid restrictions. Or did it begin earlier? Johnson-bashing has become a national pastime in the British media. 

ITV, the BBC, and Sky News have given unprecedented coverage to the party scandal. The inference is clear: Johnson lacks the morals to lead Britain. The opposition has caught on. Its leader, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer, called the prime minister a “liar” and  a “coward,” and implied that he is behind his party’s “sleaze” cases. But Starmer took offence when Johnson accused him in the House of Commons of doing more to pursue journalists when Starmer was the Crown’s Chief Prosecutor than Jimmy Savile, a deceased sexual predator. Admittedly, a joke that fell flat, even among his cohort. 

Not that Johnson needed reminding how much the Tories are at each other’s throat over his future. When push comes to shove the main problem that Johnson is facing is not Partygate, nor a rejuvenated opposition holding him to account better than it did earlier in the legislature. Johnson is fighting for his political career because large chunks of his party want him out. 

In a sense, Partygate has not weakened Johnson. Partygate emerged because the Conservative party was already up in arms with him. According to Daniel Finkelstein, a Times columnist and a sitting Conservative peer in the House of Lords, “opposition to Johnsonism clusters around two types of Tories. Those with a Thatcherite background, accusing him of ditching Thatcherite policies, and those who deem him unfit to be P.M.” Added Finkelstein: “No matter how he reshuffles his Cabinet or changes his Downing Street team. They believe that Johnson cannot run the Downing Street operation with integrity and efficiently. This claim could be potentially fatal for him.”

Finkelstein, who recently wrote a column in the Times newspaper warning against the risks of a presidential-styled way of conducting government business, after Johnson announced the creation of a Prime Minister’s Office weeks ago, is one of the party great modernizers. In the ’90s he was director of the Conservative Research Department under John Major. Later on he was political advisor to the then-leader of the opposition, William Hague. He knows the party inside-out and thinks that the Conservatives have gone a long way since the days the “Nasty Party” tag stuck to them. A more moderate, socially liberal movement has developed after 13 painful years in opposition to the New Labour juggernaut (1997-2010), but the rebranding of the Tories has not been wholly accepted by the conservative community. 

Boris Johnson’s instincts to build a new coalition of Tory voters—the “long-term” and the “first-in-time” electors as the Economist recently put it—paid dividends in the last General Election. He won by a landslide and produced the largest Conservative majority since 1987. His larger-than-life character and appeal to ordinary voters was the reason why 368 Tory members of Parliament were returned to Westminster. Many came from all-time Labour constituencies, the so-called Red Wall of post-industrial Britain. From Clwyd in Wales in the west, to Great Grimsby in the northeast, 41 constituencies that had always returned Labour M.P.s switched sides. Some did it already in 2017. But it was thanks to Johnson that the Tories really broke through in 2019.

Marco Longhi won the Dudley North seat for the Tories the first time ever back then. His town, Dudley, in the West Midlands, was a hotbed of the industrial revolution. He is of the view that “people support Johnson because of what he is. They see him as someone who is not perfect—as no man is—but likeable. When you go around with him you feel that he is in tune with the voters and their expectations.” Longhi, of obvious Italian descent, does not condone post-work drinks under lockdown but still believes in Johnson and thinks that things have blown out of proportion. When Johnson announced the end of Covid restrictions earlier in February, the Mirror published simultaneously what they defined as a “bombshell pic of the Prime Minister and a bubbly open at No 10 quiz.” Johnson was actually righting his tie and the bottle was yards away uncorked. It backfired as twitterati got up fed up with the drip, drip, drip of Partygate stories and started pelting the paper’s account. 

The prime minister’s new kind of Toryism is still hard to pin down. During the election campaign he promised to get Brexit done and he did. Then came the pandemic and it blew his plans off course. What is more, not everyone in his party agrees on what Brexit should be. For post-Thatcherite Southerners it has to be ultra-neoliberal, create a new socio-economic model in which enterprises and people’s aspirations will thrive, and unleash British economic might all over the world. When the Cabinet announced a rise in the national insurance—to come into force in April—in order to fund the NHS and social care reforms, they complained they received mails from angry constituents calling for the measure to be scrapped. Ditto with Covid restrictions. The newly founded Covid Research Group within the Tory party did not stomach new impositions to curb the spread of the Omicron variant. When Johnson brought them to the House, 99 Tory M.P.s voted against him. An omen of things to come?

But if libertarians and Thatcherites joined forces in the name of economic and individual freedoms, for the Bluewallers Brexit is about creating jobs in their constituencies, reshoring industrial activities outsourced in the great globalization craze of the late ’90s and early 2000s, and strengthening the Tory vote among the working class through the “leveling up” plan overseen by Minister Michael Gove. Johnson’s unique background as a former London mayor and people’s darling was what held the different ideological strands of conservatism together in 2019. No former Labour voters in Leigh or Middlesbrough have turned Conservative overnight. They just tried something different. 

Partygate seems to have sapped the confidence in the flamboyant P.M., but some Tories feel this is a mid-term wobble and that Johnson is still the best man to preserve his job—and theirs. In order to restore credibility the prime minister has shaken up his team. He pleased both Brexiteers and Bluewallers by choosing Stephen Barclay as his chief of staff. “He’s someone I can bump into when I am in the House” Longhi said. “If I have something to tell the Prime Minister I know he is someone I can talk to. Before you could enter 10 Downing Street only by Dan Rosenfield’s invitation.”

Sir David Lidington was David Cameron’s Minister for European Affairs from 2010 to 2016, the longest-serving in the history of the department. He chose not to stand in 2019. “I’m the least likely person to advise the current Prime Minister,” he said. “But if I were to I’d tell him to choose a Minister for the Cabinet Office that knows Whitehall inside out. The Cabinet Office is the fulcrum of the government, you need someone to rely on to run it and bring forward your own legislation.” Wasn’t Michael Gove up to the task? “Oh yes, he was, but for very obvious reasons Johnson didn’t trust him.” As for Partygate he is sure: “Johnson should have apologized earlier and then move on. Now all he is saying does not cut it.” 

With a mint new Downing Street team and all of the Covid restrictions lifted, will Boris Johnson carry on as P.M. despite Partygate, or will he be challenged? “Johnson offered a total red herring as he apologised for Partygate. M.P.s do not know what to tell their constituents,” Lord Finkelstein said. “Every way you look at it the prime minister is inexcusable.”

It was reported that he welcomed his new communications director to Downing Street to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” Whether he will or not lies in the hands of his M.P.s. Thatcherites, libertarians, Brexiteers, One Nations, Bluewallers: will the Tories finally come together to seal Boris’s fate?

Daniele Meloni is an Italian journalist and speech-writer. His book Boris Johnson: The Rise of the Conservative Leader and Post-Brexit United Kingdom is out now.