Their word, not ours. Even some of Johnson’s once closest allies are wary. “Go back to the beach,” his former Brexit sidekick David Davis says. This isn’t your time, his former ministers say.
If Johnson does prevail, if he returns to office next week, a stunning and remarkable achievement, then one other thing would be true: a formerly wounded, disgraced, deposed Johnson will return as a wounded prime minister.
Johnson just has too much baggage to make a clean start. People have seen the movie. The sequel — or Johnson 2.0 as the British press have taken to calling it — will not escape the plot points of the original.
For starters, he is still facing a perilous investigation in Parliament over whether he lied to lawmakers about covid lockdown parties at 10 Downing Street. This is a serious charge — which could see him censured or worse — and would likely make headlines for months, a constant reminder of his ouster as party leader and prime minister in July.
Liz Truss resigned as prime minister on Oct. 20 after six chaotic weeks in office. As Tory lawmakers ready themselves for a vote on Monday, over who runs their party and therefore who runs Britain, the surrogates for Johnson and his chief rival, the former finance minister Rishi Sunak, were duking it out on the morning talk shows, the gossipy Westminster WhatsAp groups and rounds of phone-calling and arm-twisting.
It is entirely possible that Johnson could top the hurdle and get 100 Conservative Party members of parliament to nominate him on Monday — and that later in the week, he could win a majority of the 170,000 or so dues-paying members of his party, who will vote online if there are two candidates still standing.
The members — older, wealthier, 97 percent white — tend to veer to the right of the party, and polling shows that they do favor Johnson over Sunak. But that may not be a given. In the last race between Truss and Sunak, the grass roots chose Truss but by less of a margin than many were expecting.
Once their hero, many say Johnson has let his members down. They might miss him — what pollsters saw as “Boris nostalgia” — but do they want to watch the next episode?
According to the BBC’s tally of public declarations, 145 lawmakers have backed Sunak; 57 are for Johnson and 23 for Penny Mordaunt. There are 357 Conservative members of Parliament, meaning that 132 have yet to declare.
While Johnson is clearly behind, there’s still a way for him to stay in the race past Monday.
But does he even want it? Johnson is the only one of three candidates not to publicly declare. Analysts say he may never formally announce, so that he isn’t on the record saying that he tried, especially if the risk of failure is high, which it is. He could just claim it was his supporters who wanted him to run.
Johnson has been “awfully quiet” this weekend, noted Robert Ford, a professor of politics at Manchester University.
Ford noted that Johnson didn’t run for leader after the 2016 Brexit vote, despite being the favorite to replace David Cameron because Johnson “thought it would be a hard slog to get the job and to do the job. He did run in 2019 when it wasn’t going to be a hard slog,” he said. “And now? It’s a hard slog … he may not get on the ballot and if he does, he may not win enough members, although he is probably the narrow favorite. And if he does get it, it’s a two-year horror show followed by an election that the Conservatives will probably lose. I’m not sure that’s going to be an offer that’s attractive to him.”
Johnson was once hugely popular. Today he is hugely divisive, even in his own party. Outside the party? The general public can’t stand him, according to the polls. His popularity has plummeted.
William Hague, a Tory grandee who was once a party leader himself, said that Johnson’s return to power was the “the worst idea I’ve heard of in the 46 years I’ve been a member of the Conservative Party” and would send the party into a “death spiral.”
Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister and influential figure among those on the right of the party, said that Johnson would be a “guaranteed disaster” that was “bound to implode.”
Baker said that Johnson isn’t one for “tedious rules” and that now “isn’t the time for Boris and his style.”
The former home secretary Suella Braverman, who is also on the right of the party, came out for Sunak. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she said that while she has previously backed Johnson “we are in dire straits now. We need unity, stability and efficiency. Rishi is the only candidate that fits the bill.
When endorsing Sunak, lawmakers use words and phrases like “stability” and “competence,” the right man for the economic challenges ahead.
Those endorsing Johnson say “he got the big calls right” and “he’s learned from his mistakes” and “is contrite.”
The majority of Brits say they want a general election, even though one is not required until January 2025. An election can be called early but it would require the support of Conservative lawmakers, which seems unlikely given that the party faces a near wipeout if an election was held today. A petition calling for a general election “to end the chaos of the current government” has quickly amassed over 850,000 signatures.
The race remains unpredictable and complicated by endless speculation and anonymous briefings.
On Saturday, the BBC alerted that Johnson had “more than 100 backers” and could be on the ballot, according to “campaign sources.”
An hour later, the outlet alerted that Suank’s supporters were demanding that Johnson “prove claims he has backing of more than 100 MPs.”
But while momentum seems for the day to be shifting to Sunak, Johnson was pulling a few big-name supporters himself.
Nadhim Zahawi, a former top minister in Johnson’s government, said he was backing his old boss again as he “got the big calls right” and argued “Britain needs him back.”
He tweeted: “When I was Chancellor, I saw a preview of what Boris 2.0 would look like. He was contrite & honest about his mistakes. He’d learned from those mistakes how he could run No10 & the country better.
Zahawi is the same man who, just three months ago when he was the second most powerful person in government, called on Johnson, to “go now.”
