The real question isn't over Keir Starmer's performance, but Johnson's. What is the appeal of the Tories, why is that appeal so solid?

There is a kind of blank spot in political analysis which presumes voters are just default Tory and that their gains are simply the inverse or Labour losses, but they are polling consistently and ridiculously highly and this analysis can't cut it.

I have seen remarkably few attempts to grapple with the ideology of Johnsonism, or even an attempt to understand it as a real thing. Far fewer than, say, Trumpism or Bushism.

You don't get 44% in the polls because people think you're a clown.