Is Boris Johnson really planning another run at No 10?

The next British PM is on a highway to the danger zone, with infighting, inexperienced ministers and the prospect of being shot down at the polls. No wonder Boris Johnson believes he can be the Tories’ Top Gun again.

Boris Johnson speaking during his final Prime Minister's Questions. Picture: AFP.

On Wednesday afternoon, moments after Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, were announced as the final two Conservative Party leadership contenders to become Britain’s next prime minister, a group of parliamentarians met on the Houses of Parliament terrace to reflect on the result. “Is it too late to withdraw my resignation letter?” mused an MP, who held a junior ministerial role until the coup against Boris Johnson. “Shouldn’t we just bring back Boris?” she said, leaving the question to hang in the air.

Another who had joined the group to drown his sorrows suggested a more dramatic option. “I’ve ordered a hose and am off home to get the car started.”

Less than three years ago they had all won seats in traditional Labour heartlands across the north and Midlands – delivering Johnson a landslide victory.

Yet Johnson, 58, has been ousted. And his party is facing an existential crisis after the leadership contest descended into a bitter “blue-on-blue” dogfight.

Polling shows the party’s electoral fortunes in free fall, with only Sunak able to beat Labour at the next general election – and only by the tiniest of margins.

Even cabinet ministers are openly speculating about whether the party needs a period in opposition to regroup after becoming marred by scandal.

Johnson bade farewell to the dispatch box on Wednesday afternoon in his final prime minister’s questions.

Boris Johnson hugs wife Carrie and their children after delivering his resignation statement in Downing Street. Picture Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street

Musing that his departure from No 10 would finally allow him to complete his book on William Shakespeare, Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said he looked forward to reading what Johnson made of “tyrannical leaders” brought down by “scheming politicians”.

Never one to miss an open goal, Johnson retorted that Davey was Polonius, the “foolish” adviser to King Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the play, he is mistakenly slain by Hamlet after attempting to spy on him.

As he reflects on his time in Downing Street this weekend, Johnson, a classicist, would doubtless prefer a comparison to Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor. His administration has certainly felt more presidential than prime ministerial.

The problem for the Conservatives, however, is that his sudden removal from power is proving to be similarly tumultuous. Much like the Roman republic after Caesar’s assassination, British politics is now riven by internecine warfare and a government paralysed by indecision.

The fall of Johnson’s empire arguably began the moment Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief adviser, quit Downing Street in November 2020.

The architect of the Vote Leave campaign left No 10 after a bitter power struggle with Carrie Johnson, the prime minister’s wife. “They had both become too powerful,” said a Downing Street insider. “Only one of them could survive.” That set in train a guerrilla campaign by Cummings, who has been deploying as much damaging information as possible, and was widely suspected of leaking the No 10 flat wallpaper scandal.

Indeed Cummings, who is now supporting Sunak’s campaign, boasted he had done more to bring down Johnson than the “entire Labour machine”.

Despite this, it took Cummings almost 20 months to see his nemesis finally ousted, following the mishandling of allegations surrounding the obscure Chris Pincher, the former deputy chief whip.

Former Number 10 special advisor Dominic Cummings. Picture: AFP.

In his final hours, Johnson remained in denial over his fate, telling allies he thought he could hang on.

At one point, he even briefly considered moving Truss to run the Treasury, putting Priti Patel, the home secretary, into the foreign office and handing Brandon Lewis the role of home secretary.

One former cabinet minister who was offered a promotion said the prime minister was shaking his hand and posing for photos before he had even been given the opportunity to decline the post. Another former cabinet minister, who briefly took charge of the reshuffle, said James “Not So” Cleverly, as he is known by rivals, was suggested as education secretary as a joke. He was later appointed.

Johnson’s enforced reshuffle not only led to a flurry of unexpected appointments. It also served to anger some of his long-term backers who had expected to be a shoo-in for promotion.

They include Conor Burns, one of his closest friends in politics, who is said to be privately smarting at the failure to promote him from a mid-level minister for Northern Ireland to secretary of state.

Chris Clarkson, another loyalist elected in 2019, is alleged to have thrown a “hissy fit” after being passed over for ministerial jobs, instead being offered the role of parliamentary private secretary to Johnson. While the post of No 10 bag carrier is typically seen as a coveted one for new MPs, Clarkson is said to have refused the job, believing he deserved more.

Other junior figures refused to change jobs. They include Paul Bristow, a PPS to Nadine Dorries, who was allowed to stay put, with another shuffled to fill the vacancy he had been lined up for.

Elsewhere, insiders say the resignation of all Commons education ministers in the run-up to Johnson’s departure, as well as the appointment of three secretaries of state in the space of the week, has left the department for education in chaos just weeks before GCSE and A-level exam results are due to be announced.

Matters have not been helped by the fact that at least one new minister is refusing to act swiftly on a growing in-tray of pending decisions, asking civil servants for detailed briefings on all of the options placed in front of them for sign-off.

In the department for health, Steve Barclay, now secretary of state, is in “bunker mode” and spends a lot of time camped inside his office. Barclay is trying to recruit a special adviser on a short-term contract of several weeks, in anticipation of being shuffled elsewhere when the new prime minister is announced.

However, others are said to be determined to turn interim posts into permanent ones. While civil servants in some parts of Whitehall have begun to wind down, Greg Clark, who replaced Michael Gove as levelling up secretary, is pushing officials in the department for levelling up to hit a raft of targets by September.

Nadhim Zahawi is “auditioning” to extend his stay as chancellor, despite questions over his tax affairs persisting.

Tory leadership contender Liz Truss campaigning for the top job. Picture: Getty Images.

Across government, officials have painted a picture of a government in paralysis. Key legislation has been put on hold, including the Online Safety Bill, while the publication of a report on whether to resume fracking in the UK has also been delayed.

Even day-to-day decisions are stalling due to a number of new ministers attempting to “second guess” what the future prime minister would do.

However, Johnson has a different idea. He is intent on pushing through a raft of new peerages in a political honours list, and a second when he steps down.

While the latter is customary, the former, rumoured to be packed with figures deemed close to Johnson, is considered highly controversial and has angered senior figures in parliament, including the Lords Speaker. Lord McFall is now planning a public intervention should Johnson get his way.

Separately, Downing Street is pushing Whitehall departments to clear a backlog of senior appointments to public bodies and quangos, in a bid to ensure that favourable candidates are chosen before Johnson leaves office.

Baroness Finn, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, is determined to appoint the next head of the National Crime Agency before September. While it has been widely reported that Johnson wants Lord Hogan-Howe, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner, Downing Street sources say the opposite is true and accused Patel of attempting to push his candidacy.

Boris and Carrie Johnson had a quiet wedding earlier this year. Picture: Getty Images.

For a man who just 18 days ago was brutally ousted from the job he has coveted his entire political life, Johnson appears to be living out his final days in Downing Street in a cheerful mood. Freed from the never-ending cycle of Westminster scandals, Johnson is relaxed and has spent the past few days hosting friends, relatives and other allies at Chequers and preparing a number of set-piece events leading up to his departure from No 10 in September.

The first of these is Downing Street drawing up plans for the prime minister to visit Poland in another show of solidarity with Ukraine.

The Johnsons are also due to throw a long-delayed wedding party in the coming days, having been forced to marry in a low-key ceremony during the pandemic. Later in the summer, the couple are also expected to make the customary visit to Balmoral, the Queen’s Scottish estate.

Johnson, who allies claim remains furious with Sunak for his part in the coup, has sought to distract himself from the race to select his successor through media-friendly stunts, including manning the controls of a Typhoon fighter jet at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire.

Pictured donning a pilot’s uniform last Thursday, Johnson quickly drew parallels with the Top Gun role reprised by Tom Cruise. Sticking with the military theme, Johnson used his final outing at PMQs to declare “mission largely accomplished, for now” before signing off “hasta la vista, baby” – words borrowed from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Conservative Leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak campaigns in Grantham. Picture: Getty Images.

For both “Maverick” Johnson’s detractors and supporters, it merely served to confirm that he has no intention of jetting off into the sunset. Multiple sources claim he believes he will one day return as prime minister, like his hero Sir Winston Churchill, who had two stints in No 10. “He thinks whoever replaces him might be a disaster and we could be back here in a few years’ time having lost a general election looking for someone with the dynamism to propel the party back into power,” a Downing Street insider said. “He thinks he is that person.”

Several MPs who helped oust Johnson have received a backlash from their constituents, stoking fears that they may face the same electoral retribution inflicted on Conservative MPs who ousted Margaret Thatcher. Backbenchers in red wall seats have been inundated with emails from voters who are furious at their role in ousting the prime minister.

They added that their postbag was filled with messages from newly converted Tory voters who have warned they will not vote for the party again now Johnson is gone. A colleague of Gary Sambrook, MP for Birmingham Northfield, claimed he had received hundreds of emails from constituents since he stood up in the Commons earlier this month and accused Johnson of refusing to accept responsibility for his mistakes.

“I think we may have f***ed up,” said another.

Johnson leaves, aides say, with the air of someone with unfinished business. Whether this is the end of the Johnsonian project, or a precursor to his own Hollywood-esque sequel, remains to be seen.

The Times