By Mark Aitken
October 23, 2022,
Pressure was piling on Boris Johnson last night as Tory MPs told him to abandon his hopes of an astonishing return to Downing Street for the good of his party and the country.
While the former prime minister’s supporters were last night suggesting he had the backing of the 100 MPs needed to run, many of his colleagues are urging him not to stand against former chancellor Rishi Sunak for the leadership.
Sunak’s supporters questioned Johnson’s claimed support while a number of his previous backers switched sides and others said he risked further division and chaos if he tried to get back to No 10 only three months after he was forced to resign.
Senior Tories warned it would be against the national interest for Johnson to return to Downing Street after he quit following a series of scandals and mass resignations.
The deadline to enter the race is 2pm tomorrow and yesterday saw ferocious lobbying of MPs by Johnson, Sunak, and House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, who is the only one so far to announce her intention to run, as the Conservatives were once again engulfed by plotting, acrimony and deal making.
Johnson had been on holiday in the Dominican Republic but arrived at Gatwick Airport in London yesterday morning after telling allies by phone that he was “up for it”.
However, Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor is blamed by Johnson’s supporters for forcing his departure from No 10, was the first leadership contender to pass the threshold of 100 MPs needed to get on the leadership ballot paper while there was no apparent groundswell of support for the former prime minister.
Claims some Tory donors had been told Johnson would not now run were quickly denied as reports suggested he was to meet Sunak last night.
More than half of the Tories’ 357 MPs had backed candidates by close of play with Sunak having twice as many MPs in his corner as Johnson with a BBC tally suggesting he had 127 declared supporters, compared to 53 for Johnson and 23 for Mordaunt.
Neither Johnson nor Sunak had officially announced they were standing, although Johnson’s father Stanley said: “I think he will put his name forward, and I think he will beat Rishi Sunak in a head to head.”
However, while Johnson has secured the backing of former cabinet colleagues Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine Dorries and Ben Wallace, some former allies had switched sides, including Steve Barclay, his one-time chief of staff, former Brexit minister Lord Frost and former veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer.
Mercer posted that, while Johnson was a friend and that he “loved him to bits, I just don’t think I can put us through all that again”.
The former prime minister’s hopes of getting on to the ballot took another blow last night when Kemi Badenoch, who many of her party colleagues rated highly during the leadership campaign in the summer, came out for Sunak.
Writing in the Sunday Times, she said Sunak was serious and honest. She said: “Mrs Thatcher won the public’s trust and three elections in a row by making it about us, not about her. We need someone who can do the same. I believe that person is Rishi Sunak.”
Tory MPs will vote for their preferred candidate tomorrow and if there are still two candidates remaining after these votes, party members will vote online with a result expected on Friday. Johnson is said to be confident of winning if the vote goes to members but will come under escalating pressure to withdraw if a convincing majority of MPs support Sunak.
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine MP Andrew Bowie, who is backing Sunak, described the claim that the former prime minister had the 100 MPs needed to run as “doubtful”.
Bowie said: “Boris Johnson has a lot of qualities but I really don’t think it is in his own interest, nor is it in a national interest, for him to return as leader of the Conservative Party or even to frontline politics.
“It was only three months ago that Conservative MPs decided en masse that he was not the right person to continue as leader. He was forced out as prime minister with the highest number of resignations by any government in history.
“We can’t forget that and I think that for his own sake, despite his numerous qualities, he needs to take some time to reflect on why that happened. In the national interest, I think it’s really important that we move on.”
Tory grandees were also unconvinced that Johnson should return. Former leader William Hague said it could send the party into “a death spiral” while former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said it would be the “worst example” of putting the Tory party’s interest ahead of the public interest.
He told Times Radio: “He was prime minister for two or three years and he showed no interest, never mind leadership, on economic policy.”
Johnson is also still facing an inquiry into whether he lied to the Commons over the Partygate scandal. If found guilty by the Commons Privileges Committee, he could face recall proceedings that would leave him fighting for his seat.
Dominic Raab, who was Boris Johnson’s former deputy PM and is backing Sunak as the next prime minister, said: “It doesn’t seem to me possible for anyone to be prime minister who is absorbed and has their focus distracted and is enmeshed in that next saga or episode of the soap opera that is Partygate, and at the same time give the country the attention that it requires.
“We have to have the country and the government moving forward.”
Mordaunt was the first MP to confirm her candidacy to replace Liz Truss as prime minister and released a campaign video yesterday morning.
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk MP John Lamont, who is supporting Mordaunt, said: “I strongly believe the Conservative Party and the government need to look forward and not go back to the debates and the discussions we had previously when Boris was prime minister.”
Some Scottish Conservative associations also said it was time for the party to move on from Johnson.
Gordon Wallace-Brown, deputy chair of East Renfrewshire Conservatives Association, said: “I’m not a believer in people coming back who have remitted office for whatever reason. We need a new vision.”
Former chair of Moray Conservatives Marc Macrae, who is a councillor for Fochabers Lhanbryde, said: “I would hope that MPs will put their support behind one candidate and we can move forward. Boris did a fantastic job in the past but is he the man now? Possibly not.”
Former Aberdeen South MP Ross Thomson, who was Johnson’s Scottish campaign manager for the 2019 General Election and who supported Truss’s campaign to be leader this summer, said: “I’m speaking to activists and members all the time and there’s a genuine feeling of frustration, anger and disappointment at what happened in Westminster over the last week.”
Relationships expert: Reunion with an ex depends on trust
By Amie Flett
The Tory Party thinking about reuniting with their ex leader is understandable but fraught with risk, according to a relationship expert.
Angela Trainer warned that while rekindled relationships can work, success depends on genuine change and new trust, adding: “The first and most important thing is to look at why we go back to an ex: it’s familiar.
“Human beings generally don’t like change, we prefer the status quo of what we know. The future is unknown and therefore that feels more risky, more challenging.
“In relationships, there’s an expression, ‘In memory gardens, it’s always summer’, so sometimes when we leave a relationship, we forget the reasons we left, and only remember the good times.”
Trainer, a director of Harvest Clinic in Glasgow, believes to repair a broken relationship, there needs to be change and a level of trust restored.
But in Johnson’s case, she’s not convinced enough time has passed to ensure history does not repeat itself. “One of the definitions of insanity is when you keep doing the same thing and expect to get different results,” Trainer said.
“Can people change? Yes, with support, work and effort – but only when there is insight into what it is that needs to change and understanding exactly what that is. Real hard work is when there’s supervision on how you challenge those behaviours and that doesn’t happen in just a couple of months. Change takes time.
“In terms of Boris Johnson, where’s the insight? Where’s the learning? Does he even have any concept of what he did wrong in the first place – or did he just get caught? I’d say in this case, the major issue there, and again in relationships, is trust.
“When the trust is broken, you don’t get that back in a heartbeat, that has to be repaired and it has to be earned.
“I’m not hearing anything from Boris Johnson that he understands what he did was unacceptable and why. There is no signs of change.”
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Johnson’s return pits fantasists against realists within the disintegrating Tory Party
With Boris Johnson apparently standing for the Tory leadership, there will be a battle between realists and fantasists for what little remains of the party’s soul.
With Liz Truss now confirmed as Britain’s shortest serving PM ever (by a comfortable margin), the country now waits nervously to see who our successor will be. The nerves are well justified, because Boris Johnson is reported to be among the main contenders. Candidates require the backing of 100 MPs to have a chance, and it appears that only three candidates are in contention: Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt. If all three get 100 supporters, then MPs will eliminate one, and we’ll end up with the same situation as if two get 100 supporters, i.e. two candidates will go forward for electronic voting among the membership. If Johnson is one of them, it seems inevitable he will win as most of them support him; he will likely only be stopped if the final two is Mordaunt and Sunak.
Predictably, air-headed Tory MPs and pro-Brexit Twitter accounts are crying out for Johnson’s return, and he is also likely to be the preferred choice of Tory members, who of course crashed the economy by choosing Truss just months ago. Incredibly, Graham Brady seems content to give them the final say again. This may well lead to the return of Johnson, because a lot of Tories either view him as some sort of messiah, or as a sticking plaster that can somehow cover up all of the horrific damage he has done, through his skills as an accomplished liar.
Ample support for Johnson among MPs, but no rational explanations for it.
Plenty of Tory MPs on Twitter are declaring for either Johnson or Sunak. Penny Mordaunt will be disappointed that her name comes up far less regularly, though perhaps she is doing better in private. But what is striking is that contrast between the measured, logical arguments from those backing Sunak (e.g. Steve Double), most of which mention his (relative) economic competence, and the populist arguments from Johnson’s backers. Andrea “fingers up at the public” Jenkyns skwarks “Will of the People!” like a Brexit-backing parrot returned, like Johnson, from retirement. Meanwhile Mark Pritchard parrots Johnson himself, claiming he gets the big decisions right and is a winner. Amanda Milling even less wisely parrots Liz Truss, saying Johnson has a record of “delivery”. Marco Longhi gives no meaningful reason, whereas Rees-Mogg offers no reason at all. David Morris says (without any apparent irony) that Johnson would unite the party, which is palpably untrue. Tom Pursglove talks about a “mandate” and what the members want; and pound-shop Johnson cosplayer Michael Fabricant agrees. Not one of these people mentions the economy, or the current crisis which the new PM will have to address. Not one.
This wing of the Tory Party is behaving like an alcoholic who managed to quit drinking, experimented with cocaine for six weeks, and is now about to fall off the wagon again by returning to the drink even harder. Opinions are divided over whether Johnson can get the support of 100 MPs. Still, it seems clear he would win any run-off vote among Tory members, who have again been given the final say in a pitch-perfect example of a party not learning from its mistakes.
The lure
True believers want Johnson back for two reasons, both strongly connected to the fact that he is a serial liar. The first is that he successfully presented the illusion that everything was going fine. When Truss took office, Britain was already facing significant financial problems, which she of course proceeded to make dramatically worse. Anyone who watched PMQs during Johnson’s tenure will have an idea why these problems seemed to materialise out of nowhere – every time Keir Starmer asked him a question, no matter what it was, Johnson would invariably respond with a stock line about how well the economy was doing. No doubt if he returns, he’ll try to do the same, or more likely claim that everything will magically fix itself if the country sticks with him. For all her faults and terrible mistakes, Truss at least tried to address the country’s problems directly. Johnson will try to pretend them away again. The point is, those who don’t pay close attention to politics would be forgiven for thinking that Britain’s financial problems materialised out of nowhere when Truss took office, creating some misplaced nostalgia for when all seemed fine under Johnson.
The second reason Johnson fans want him back is that he has successfully instilled in them a belief in alternative reality. Pretty much all of them insist that he was forced from office by the mainstream media over Partygate, when in fact it was Tory MPs after he promoted the known sex pest Chris Pincher. Private eye summed it up best. No doubt if Johnson takes office again they will continue to deny the evidence of their eyes, or blame everyone but him when they can’t make ends meet.
The reality facing Johnson
Although they may not even realise it, these fools think that bringing Johnson back will make the country’s financial problems disappear. He won’t of course. He’ll turn up on our TV screens telling us there’s nothing to worry about, mortgages aren’t going up, our energy bills haven’t really skyrocketed, yadda yadda yadda. True Believers will lap it up, but everyone else will see through it. Johnson’s backers probably expect a bounce in the polls, but it will be very short-lived. Johnson of course enjoys the attention he’s receiving now, and the thought of being the first but one PM since Churchill to serve non-consecutive terms (in between came Harold Wilson). But if he does, he will not be able to escape the reality of the situation, nor will he be able to offer any answers to it beyond his usual lies. People’s lives will get worse, the chancellor will raise taxes and cut services, while Johnson blusters that everything is all right. As noted above, his core supporters will deny that all this is happening, but Tory MPs will quickly realise their mistake, but will be left shackled to this serial liar, with no way out except a general election. Unless, that is, the Commons Privileges Committee finds him guilty of misconduct, which could well trigger a byelection, which would probably see him out of office within a few months of his return.
There is hope. One MP, Roger Gale, has taken a principled stance, stating that he’d resign from the party if Johnson becomes leader. Should more Tory MPs take this stance, MPs might change their mind about supporting Johnson, for fear he’d be obliged to call a general election from losing his majority as soon as he takes office. Meanwhile, Sunak and Mordaunt are benefitting by being made to look like grown-ups by comparison. In contrast, in reality, Sunak stood by Johnson’s side throughout most of his awful premiership, whereas Mordaunt still hasn’t apologised for her blatant lie about Turkey and the EU. Yet these are now the best the Tory party now has to offer.
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