Top Tories say Boris Johnson is ‘plunging party into an identity crisis’

Partygate and U-turns on tax are undermining message', say Conservative MPs as more call for him to quit

Boris Johnson has plunged the Conservative party into an acute identity crisis as a result of Partygate and U-turns over tax policy, senior Tories warned last night, as more MPs called for him to resign as prime minister.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith told the Observer his party had been left with an enormous identity problem" because it had raised taxes instead of cutting them under Johnson and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, undermining a core Tory message that had helped win it successive general elections.