Where did it all go wrong? In a parallel universe, Boris Johnson would be surging in the polls by now, with the good news on omicron validating his decision not to put the country into full lockdown and the public applauding his looming reversal of Covid restrictions. Instead, Downing Street is in crisis and the Tory party in open revolt after a series of scandals, poor decisions, botched policies and amid a calamitous cost of living crisis. 

The opinion polls are utterly diabolical, and a survey of Tory party members from the grassroots website ConservativeHome reveals that a majority, previously Johnson’s core foot-soldiers, wants him to quit now. Vast numbers of Tory local councillors and candidates are about to be sacrificed at the May elections, allowing Labour to make a mess of even more of local government.

So what can Mr Johnson now do, if he truly wishes to save his premiership? Waiting for Sue Gray’s report to tell us what we already know isn’t enough; and neither is simply donning sackcloth-and-ashes, sacking a few underlings and trying to contain the scandal purely by circling the wagons within the frontbench. Without question, No10 needs to be drastically reordered; the scandals betray a total lack of discipline and competence.

But just as big an issue as No 10 personnel and culture is the lack of a defining mission that would galvanise parliamentary and constituency support, that would make people think that even though they may be disgusted by the scandals, there is a good reason for sticking with the Tories. Boris Johnson ran on a clear platform of delivering Brexit, destroying Jeremy Corbyn’s version of Labour and unleashing the nation’s economic and democratic potential. If support melts away now, it’s partly because this programme has been forgotten, and the Government has slouched towards social democracy instead – raising taxes with greater abandon than Labour ever did, obsessing about achieving carbon net zero at extreme speed, regardless of the price, and failing to tackle the explosion in inflation and other costs.

One way of drawing a line under this chaos is to acknowledge the policy errors, and move in a radically different direction that reminds voters of the philosophical difference between Tories and Labour, of what conservatism can deliver and socialism threatens to destroy. 

The PM should show the voters who gave him a landslide that he is still on their side by scrapping the projected increase in National Insurance, as part of a total rethink on tax and spend. This tax is an assault upon workers – as Labour has pointed out, allowing a party still dominated by the hard-Left to dress itself up as more conservative on tax than the Conservatives.

Cancelling the increase will necessitate a new Budget, as it will blow a hole in the current fiscal plans – but blame lies squarely with the PM for committing the country to excessive spending in the first place, and an alternative agenda exists. Britain must be put back on the path of public sector reform, and while obviously resources must be made available to clear the NHS backlog, at least £10bn in spending cuts should be pushed through immediately, with the deficit allowed to increase slightly and temporarily also.

Time was when Mr Johnson identified himself as standing on the side of the consumer, as a liberal-minded and patriotic politician who thought the government should largely leave people alone. This has been jettisoned in favour of the nanny state and social-democracy, which is both an economic miscalculation and a political one. 

Are Extinction Rebellion, anti-car activists, supporters of big government and higher taxes and Greta Thunberg now queuing up to defend the Prime Minister? Successive Tory governments have bent over backwards to give the Left everything it wants with no electoral payoff whatsoever. Key to political survival is loyalty, to remember who put you where you are and why.