• United Kingdom: Hundreds of Britons demonstrate in London against Boris Johnson's measures to control the coronavirus
  • UK Labor revives in times of coronavirus

Boris Johnson's popularity freefall, due to his fiascoes in managing the coronavirus crisis, has led to a 40% tie in polls with Keir Starmer's Labor Party. In just five months, the opposition leader has cut the abysmal distance of 26 points that existed between the two great British political forces at the start of the crisis (54% to 28%).

Opinium's poll for The Observer has set off alarms in the Conservative Party, which will receive its own leader with fuss on Tuesday, at the start of parliamentary sessions after a particularly turbulent summer for Johnson, initialed by the scandal of the notes of selectivity and with the swings in the return to school also scheduled for September 1 in England.

"It seems that this Government is constantly sticking its finger in the air to know which way the air is blowing," laments the vice president of the 1922 parliamentary committee Charles Walker, considered until now a faithful ally of Johnson. " This is not a sustainable way to govern ."

"It is becoming more and more difficult for deputies to defend this government that changes its policy or abandons its decisions without warning," Walker warns in statements to The Observer . "We don't know if it's a designed strategy or if it happens by accident, but the climate of uncertainty it creates is eroding our morale."

The return to Parliament and the start of the school year will serve, in the words of a "Tory" deputy, to "take the temperature and decide the action plan." The leadership of Boris Johnson, something unquestionable after winning the December elections by an absolute majority and completing Brexit on January 31, is beginning to be questioned after the chain of political swings that has pierced his credibility in the midst of the pandemic.

On March 23, when Johnson ordered the lockdown, then-leader Jeremy Corbyn's lead in polls over Labor was the largest in decades: 54% to 28%. The recovery of Labor was cemented by the election as new leader of Keir Starmer, who initially criticized Johnson's "slowness" in the face of the pandemic and has extended his attacks on the "incompetence" of the government.

A string of failures since March

Johnson's fall began to take shape with the delay in applying drastic measures in the face of the pandemic, until it became the country with the most "official" deaths from coronavirus in Europe (41,486 to date). The "premier" contracted the disease and was admitted to the ICU at St. Thomas Hospital. The hiatus of just a month left a sense of power vacuum that continued after his return to Downing Street in late April, physically and politically weakened by convalescence.

The scandal of his strategist Dominic Cummings, who violated the confinement with his family and traveled 400 kilometers between London and Durham, notably weakened his image. His determination to defend him at all costs, in the face of requests for the resignation of dozens of "Tory" deputies, resulted in a first marked slump that set the trend for weeks.

The reversal of the concession to Huawei of part of the 5G framework in the United Kingdom also took its toll. Johnson was forced to change policy both by pressure from Washington and by a group of up to 80 rebellious MPs, led by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, who threatened to torpedo his plans in Parliament.

The popular outrage caused by the reduction of the selectivity grades (the exams were suspended during the pandemic) put the finishing touch to a bumpy summer. The scandal broke out the same day that the "premier" began his vacation in Scotland. Far from being personally involved in the matter, he left his Secretary of Education, Gavin Williamson, in the front line of fire and decided to keep him in his post through thick and thin.

The government backtracked, suspended the application of the "mutant algorithm" (in Johnson's own words) that caused the chaos and finally awarded the marks - quite benign - based on the teachers' forecasts. The criticism extended to the lurching of the Government before the start of the school year, and in particular to the refusal to recommend the use of masks in secondary schools in England, in contrast to Scotland.

All these factors have influenced the "tie" of Labor, much more disciplined under Keir Starmer, despite the blows of anti-Semitism that forced him to oust Rebecca Long-Bailey, the last survivor on his team of the era. Corbyn. Today, former prosecutor Starmer already surpasses Johnson in polls as a potential "prime minister.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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