In a recent interview on Sky News, Boris Johnson suggested an underlying reason why the North Shropshire by-election result was so bad for the Government.
Which was that “what people have been hearing is a constant litany of stuff about politics and politicians and stuff that isn’t about them”.
One way of reading those words is he believes that media focus was excessively concentrated on Downing Street parties – or “staff gatherings”, as they are referred to in Sue Gray’s investigation, which has yet to report.
The good news for the Prime Minister is that over two in five of our panel believe this to be the case, and also think that the issue isn’t important to most voters in any event.
The bad news is that over half of it doesn’t. At the least, these Party members believe that the controversy is important to many voters. At the worst, they think that Johnson himself is to blame for it.