Tories are hoping voters will forget Partygate – they won’t

What do Conservative MPs see in Boris Johnson? The question has been asked again and again – and again, and again – over a number of years, but never more so than in the past few weeks. Politically toxic, bad at governing and unable to tame his parliamentary party, the prime minister currently has few things going for him.

Still, he remains in post, at least partly because plotters do not know for certain that they would be able to topple him right now. It has been baffling to witness from the outside, like watching a friend sticking with their deadbeat boyfriend for no discernible reason.

As Stephen Bush pointed out in a column last week, the Conservative Party isn’t even stuck in stasis; the longer Johnson stays on, the worse things are likely to go for them in the long run. “The big lie that Tory MPs are telling themselves is that, as the rows over parties fade from the news, Boris Johnson will rebound,” he wrote. “And the big political problem with the Conservative Party’s big lie is that it may have real consequences for the Tory party as a whole.”

In short: the longer, say, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak stand by a frightfully unpopular leader, the less popular they will be themselves. Why is no one moving, then?

Well, there are a few potential explanations, but there is one I have been thinking about a lot recently. It has to do with memory and how we choose to use it, or disregard it.

On 19 January, David Davis stood in the chamber of the House of Commons and, in a dramatic intervention, told Boris Johnson: “In the name of God, go.” Exactly two weeks later, David Davis stood a few yards away from the chamber, and amicably smiled as he stood by Boris Johnson, posing for pictures celebrating the children’s parliament.

In some ways, it was an entirely unremarkable sequence of events; Johnson is the prime minister, the children’s parliament is a valuable endeavour, and Davis supports it. In others, it was entirely absurd; in what other workplace could you stand in the middle of an open-plan office, call on your boss to resign, then appear next to him at meetings a fortnight later as if nothing had happened?

Westminster is a place where it pays to have a short memory; MPs can draw their pistols at dawn over one issue then campaign together on another a month later. Journalists can screw over politicians one day and drink with them the next; special advisers can go to war with one another if their departments demand that they do so, then work in (more or less) perfect harmony once the departments move on.

Some grudges can remain but, broadly speaking, it is in no one’s interest to fall out with someone then decide never to engage with them again. Politics benefits from ever-shifting alliances, and everyone knows it.

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If this is the world you live in, it makes sense to assume that the public will get bored of Partygate eventually, then forget about it altogether. The slate will be clean, and Johnson will be able to climb out of the hole he dug for himself. It would make no sense to have a leadership contest now if waiting for the public to hopefully move on is an option.

Of course, the problem with this is that the public has no intrinsic interest in forgiving politicians, or having a short memory. There is nothing in it for them; instead, grudges can be left to fester, even if they are no longer seen as a priority.

Conservative MPs can dither and hope all they like, but they should remember the fate of Ed Miliband. A lot happened in the five years he spent as Labour leader; some good, some bad, much of it memorable. Still, before the election, what was he asked about? Whether he regretted having stabbed his brother in the back in 2010.

Voters have long memories, and only they get to decide what matters to them and what doesn’t. Tories in Westminster may find it easy to move on from issues once they have grown tired of them, but they cannot force the country to do the same.