Johnson NOT being fined would be the worst Tory outcome
The next big question in “partygate” is whether the prime minister will actually face fixed penalty fines by the police for lockdown violations.
There has been some interesting speculation about what would happen if he doesn’t actually get fined and how the public will react. For that could reignite the “one law for us one law for everybody else” narrative that has driven the sharp decline in Johnson’s ratings.
Not only would it just reinforce all the public anger it would also be a reminder of what happened. The last thing the PM wants is this featuring in the headlines again,
We have seen in recent days a small Tory recovery in the voting intention polls and that might be down to the fact that there hasn’t been another party gate revelation that causes embarrassment to Johnson.
Back on November 6th Johnson had a net approval rating with Opinium of minus 20%. The latest figures from the firm published at the weekend had that at minus 38%. To put this into context the latest Opinium poll had Starmer on par with his approve and disapprove figures being exactly the same.