Patrick Christys: If there was a by-election in your seat right now, would you vote Tory?

Boris Johnson has been given a massive warning. Last night news broke that the Liberal Democrats have snatched North Shropshire.

The lady who came a distant third at the 2019 general election, Helen Morgan, overturned a 23,000 majority and won a seat that has been in Tory hands for almost 200 years.

I want to know - if there was a by-election in your seat right now, would you vote Tory?

I think the main issue for Boris Johnson and the Conservative party is that, well, it’s not very Conservative.

Boris stood on a ticket of low taxes, levelling up, tight borders…And here we are…

We’ve been given a big green agenda that seemingly came out of nowhere, that’s going to cost us all a shed load of cash and achieve diddly squat when it comes to tackling global warming.

The Tories pledged not to raise tax, but they hiked them to help pay for health and social care, despite the fact that basically all of that money will be gobbled up by the NHS and not go to social care.

Also, the planned cut to income tax isn’t happening either.Our border in the Channel might as well not exist.

Channel crossings have risen 8,700% in the last three years, obviously Boris hasn’t been in charge for all of that time so it would be unfair to blame him for all of it but in the last year we’ve seen around 27,000 arrivals, this time last year the figure was about 8,400.

We haven’t deported a single one of them yet. I think more than Tory sleaze allegations or Christmas parties that may or may not have taken place, it’ll be the images of border force officers spending thousands and thousands of pounds on Dominos pizza for illegal immigrants that really turn Conservative voters off.

North Shropshire voted for Brexit, it’s a Brexit-backing seat, and it’s just elected a Liberal Democrat, someone from a party that wanted to overturn the result of a democratic referendum and take us back into the EU.That’s a big statement.

I doubt very much that the people of North Shropshire were signalling their intentions to rejoin the European Union at this by-election, but they were definitely signalling that they absolutely didn’t want Boris Johnson.

Boris was supposedly this big libertarian, but we’ve just introduced vaccine passports and we’ve had some of the most draconian restrictions imposed on our lives in history.But on that point - are people being a bit unfair on Boris here?

He nearly died, his mum’s passed away, he’s become a father twice, Carrie had a miscarriage, the pandemic has been absolutely mental and no leader anywhere in the world got it right, in fact no matter what he does he’ll be criticised.

I think Keir Starmer is getting off very lightly here. Labour came third with just 9.6% of the vote. That’s a terrible result. Keir Starmer has been Labour Leader for a while now and he’s not had any cut through whatsoever - he’s been presented with government chaos, mass public dissatisfaction, corruption claims, romantic scandals, Tory infighting and Starmer hasn’t managed to do a single thing with it.

Nothing. He’s just an empty vessel in a smart suit.If people are calling Boris Johnson’s leadership into question over this North Shropshire result, and they are, then Keir Starmer should be considering his position as well.

My visceral disdain for Tony Blair knows no bounds but if we was in charge of the Labour Party now, they’d have won that seat.

I also think the Tory candidate was poor - Neil Shastri-Hurst was asked in the run-up to the election four times if he thought Boris Johnson was a man of honesty and he couldn’t answer the question.

Look, the message is loud and clear for Boris Johnson, if he wants his Conservative party to win elections, they have to actually be a Conservative party.