Voters fed up with ‘partygate’ and are more worried about cost of living, insists Oliver Dowden

Voters are “fed up with the distraction” of rule-breaking parties in Downing Street and are more concerned with the cost of living crisis and war in Ukraine, the Conservative Party chairman has insisted.

Speaking ahead of this week’s council elections, Oliver Dowden said that “the further you get from Westminster”, the more people are concerned about local issues.

Conservative volunteers have been trying to convince voters to make their choice on Thursday on issues such as council tax and bin collections, rather than be swayed by misgivings over Boris Johnson and the Government. 

Some senior Tories are considering a fresh bid to oust the Prime Minister after the election, having previously refrained from public remarks that could have harmed the party’s prospects this week.

On Saturday, the Prime Minister warned that Thursday’s elections are important because “people are voting for councillors and councils who decide how often bins are collected, how many potholes are repaired and how much council tax is paid”.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Dowden – who has been touring the country as the minister in charge of the election campaign – said: “The argument that I have been making is that, if you’re worried about the cost of living, the single best thing you can do on May 5 is vote Conservative, because what you don’t want to do is wake up the next morning and realise that that protest vote has cost you dearly.”

In an apparent bid to reassure traditional supporters concerned about rising taxes and growing government interventions, Mr Dowden also said the Conservatives had “definitely reached peak state” – with a need now to roll back the reach of Whitehall in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said it was “incumbent on every government minister” to see where they could make spending reductions in their department, to help fund lower taxes.

Speaking at a cafe in Sutton, south London, where he was campaigning with Tom Drummond, the leader of the council’s Conservative group, Mr Dowden said: “I’ve been the length and breadth of the country. Of course they are challenging elections, not least because we are mid-term and of course, there’s everything else going on, but what I would say is that there is much more focus on delivery and ‘what can Conservatives do for us?’ than you would think.

“The further you get from Westminster, the more people are focused on the delivery issues. There’s this perception in Westminster that every door we’re knocking on, parties are coming up on the doorstep. That really is not the case.

“Of course, there are some people who are very annoyed about it. But, on the list of things that have come up on the doorstep, parties actually come up very rarely – and frequently the people who are raising it were people that were never going to support us in the first place.

“I’m not complacent about it and I’ve said why people are right to be angry, why we were right to apologise and so on. But the country are looking at more things than just that.”

A recent YouGov poll found that 57 per cent of voters believed Mr Johnson should resign, having been fined for breaching Covid-19 rules at a gathering in the Cabinet Room for his birthday in June 2020.

But Mr Dowden said: “I think that people are fed up with the distraction of it all. And I say distraction advisedly, because I think it cuts both ways – so they’re annoyed that the thing happened in the first place but … when people are sat around the kitchen table and when they’re looking at their energy bills, or they’re looking at the leaflets and thinking ‘am I going to get the pothole fixed on the road’ … that’s what’s front of mind and that’s what people are focusing on.”

Mr Johnson added on Saturday: “It’s Conservative councils who charge the lowest council tax anywhere in the country, on top of our £150 council tax rebate for over 20 million households this month.

“The choice on May 5 is clear. Labour and Lib Dems who fritter away your council tax on deciding which statues to tear down or Conservatives, delivering value for money and delivering on your local priorities.”

On Saturday, it also emerged that the Metropolitan Police is investigating alleged Covid-19 law breaches at a Christmas party at the Conservatives’ headquarters in December 2020. 

Ben Mallet, who was campaign manager for Shaun Bailey, the Tories’ unsuccessful London mayoral candidate and who is standing as a candidate in Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, is accused of attending the party. “The investigation is ongoing,” the Metropolitan Police told i newspaper.