Boris Johnson is pleading with Rishi Sunak, his old Chancellor-turned-Brutus, to “get back together” so he can return as Prime Minister, at least in name.
Johnson, having achieved remarkably little after finally becoming Prime Minister in 2019 and winning the Conservative Party their biggest parliamentary majority since the 1980s in a snap election — besides a hollow Brexit, a historically high tax burden, and various green agenda policies none of his supporters asked for — was forced out in September after scandals involving breaches of his own lockdown regime and the promotion of a known sex pest.
The resignation of his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, played a significant role in activating what Johnson described as the “Westminster herd instinct” which put an end to his premiership, and Johnson loyalists worked hard to ensure that Liz Truss, not Sunak, would succeed him.
These efforts were successful, with ordinary party members backing Truss over Sunak by a significant margin despite Sunak being the parliamentary elite’s clear favourite in the knockout votes that winnowed leadership contenders down to the final two members were allowed to vote for.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the nature of the Tory parliamentary party, they did not tolerate being defied by supporters they view as mere election fodder, and Truss has already been ousted after the shortest premiership in British history — but the smooth transition to Sunak or one of his supporters they intend has now been thrown into doubt by the man he politically assassinated.
While many expected the leadership ‘contest’ this time to be stitched up in Westminster without consulting the wider party, Sir Graham Brady — the man who sets the rules in these regards — confirmed despite it being a short competition, the 180,000-odd members in the wider country would still get a stay. This puts the Sunak faction in peril a second time.
Now, not content with making serious bank on the post-relevance lecture circuit from beyond the political grave, Johnson looks determined to attempt the most audacious political comeback in generations by becoming the first Prime Minister to return to the premiership a second time since the 1970s, and the first Tory to do so since his hero, Sir Winston Churchill, who achieved the feat in the 1950s.
Being an institutionally craven organisation, many of the Conservative Party’s Members of Parliament (MPs) are unsurprisingly skittish about welcoming back a man the establishment media so despise, but dozens of MPs including Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg have already backed him under the slogan ‘Boris or Bust’.
Knowing he is highly likely to win any ballot of ordinary members, the party elite have set a very high bar parliamentary support for Johnson or any candidate to even enter the leadership race, with fully 100 endorsements by MPs required — but, as of the time of publication, he was already over halfway there, only slightly behind Sunak and well ahead of Bill Gates-backed social leftist Penny Mordaunt.
Johnson, ever the ruthless pragmatist, seems to seek a shock mending of fences with Sunak, whom he blamed for his downfall and worked so hard to keep from replacing him, as his best chance of beating the party establishment. That establishment, currently helmed by Jeremy Hunt, the Sunak-supporting de facto Prime Minister, was crushed by Johnson when they went head to head for the party leadership in 2019.
“If the Tories are serious about winning in 2024 and want to stop a general election before then they need to revert to the guy with a mandate who is a seasoned campaigner,” said a so-called “ally” of Johnson to The Telegraph, which is close to the Conservative Party, in reference to the former premier’s admittedly impressive 2019 election triumph.
“They need someone to take the fight to Labour. There’s no point going to a yellow box junction without knowing how you are going to get out of it. Rishi should make contact and work out how the two of them can get back together,” the “ally” added.
“I think we need to bring the band back together. These are two big beasts in our party and it makes absolute sense for them to be working together,” concurred Johnson backer Paul Bristow MP, in comments to LBC quoted by MailOnline.
Whether or not Sunak could possibly stand to play second fiddle to Johnson again remains to be seen — he is perhaps less likely to be content to wait in the wings for his turn to lead than before, given the Tories’ election prospects are much bleaker now than at any point since they returned to office in 2010 — but it is clear enough that, if Johnson were to return, he would Prime Minister in name only.
The “right-wing” faction within the Conservative parliamentary party who inexplicably regards Johnson as one of their own, have long been a captive minority in a party which is not really for Brexit, for immigration controls, or even for tax cuts anymore.
As a faction, they may — just — be able to get Johnson into the leadership contest, or even the final two, but as the ouster of Truss and the sacking of pro-borders Suella Braverman show, they will never be allowed to set the agenda. A revived Johnson administration would implement the establishment platform of open borders, high taxation, and managed decline already imposed on Liz Truss — or be swiftly destroyed by its own MPs.
But actually, this may not really trouble Johnson — a man who has been for staying in the EU and expanding it to include Turkey, then for Brexit; a man who has been for fracking for shale gas, then for banning it and pursuing net-zero; an icon of political incorrectness, then pro-woke.
Indeed, for a man who has spent a lifetime climbing towards high office like a vine climbs towards the sun, with principles and policies adopted and discarded without qualms along the way, serving as an empty vessel for Sunak and his supporters may suit Johnson very well — anything to go be able to go back to being feted in Davos and Kyiv and relishing the trappings of office, which are all that really motivates him.
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