Denis Staunton: This is a moment of real peril for Boris Johnson

Less than three weeks after he survived a no-confidence vote, Boris Johnson is again in peril following the Conservative byelection defeats in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton and the resignation of party chairman Oliver Dowden. The byelections saw voters in both parts of Johnson’s electoral coalition turning away from the Conservatives to vote tactically by backing the opposition party most likely to win.

Labour won the Yorkshire seat of Wakefield by almost 5,000 votes on a 12 per cent swing that would be enough for an overall majority at Westminster if it was replicated all over the country. The Liberal Democrats’ victory in the Devon seat of Tiverton and Honiton was more dramatic, overturning the biggest majority ever in a byelection with a 30 per cent swing.

Labour, which came second in Tiverton and Honiton in 2019, saw their candidate lose her deposit on Thursday and the Liberal Democrats saw their vote fall in Wakefield. Labour voters shunned the Liberal Democrats after they went into government with David Cameron in 2010 and Liberal Democrats refused to vote for Jeremy Corbyn but Johnson’s unpopularity has seen tactical voting return.

[ Johnson dismisses calls for resignation after double byelection defeat ]

Until now, Johnson’s position within his party has been shored up by the failure of any cabinet ministers to resign over Partygate. Dowden’s resignation is important because it is the first crack in the cabinet’s support for Johnson but also because of Dowden’s position within the Conservative parliamentary party.

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When he backed Johnson for the leadership in 2019 in a joint newspaper article with Rishi Sunak and Robert Jenrick, they represented the ambitious “coming men” of the party. By resigning now, Dowden is sending a signal to other MPs with hopes of a bright future that Johnson is an obstacle in their way.

The prime minister has sought to secure his position in recent weeks by pleasing his right-wing backbenchers with bills to scrap the Northern Ireland protocol and to allow ministers to ignore rulings from the European Court of Human Rights. His problem is that his embrace of polarising policies reinforces opposition to him among the 60 per cent of voters who do not support the Conservatives, driving more of them to vote tactically in order to get his government out of office.

Johnson is in Rwanda for a Commonwealth summit and meetings of G7 and Nato leaders next week mean that he will not be back in Britain until next Friday. While he is gone, his MPs will be calculating what the swings in Thursday’s byelections mean for their own electoral prospects and considering what to do about it.