Kicking and screaming, but former British PM Boris Johnson hasn’t gone

Allies suggest the former British PM’s return to parliament might be sooner rather than later, although any attempt is likely to be blocked while Rishi Sunak is in charge.

Boris Johnson made clear his anger goes well beyond the MPs on the privileges committee and towards prime minister Rishi Sunak himself. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

Boris Johnson may have resigned as MP but he made very clear in his statement on Friday that he does not see this as the end of his political career.

In an vituperative attack on his critics the former prime minister said that he was “bewildered and appalled” to be “forced out, anti-democratically”, by a committee that was guilty of “egregious bias”.

But it was not, he insisted, the end: “It is very sad to be leaving parliament, at least for now,” he said.

Allies suggested his return could come sooner rather than later and that he could even try to stand in Mid Bedfordshire, the seat that was vacated on Friday by his biggest cheerleader, Nadine Dorries, who resigned after being blocked for a peerage in Johnson’s resignation honours list.

He has also been spotted in Henley, his former constituency whose MP, John Howell, is due to retire at the next election. But Johnson’s hopes for an early return to parliament could be limited, at least while Rishi Sunak is in charge.

Any attempt to stand in Mid Bedfordshire, or any other seat, would need the approval of Conservative Central Office and ultimately Sunak, and that is very unlikely to be forthcoming.

There is very little sympathy in Downing Street or among most cabinet ministers for Johnson’s travails and many will not be sad to see the back of him, at least in parliament.

“It is all very well Boris complaining about how unfair the process has been,” one senior

Conservative said Friday. “But this whole process was set up when he was prime minister and he approved every aspect of it. It’s all very well accusing them of conducting a witch-hunt now that they have found against him but if he thought the process was unfair, or the MPs on the committee would be biased, why didn’t he raise that at the time?”

But even if Johnson has no immediate path to a political comeback, that does not make him any less dangerous to Sunak.

In his statement he made clear that his anger goes well beyond the MPs on the privileges committee and towards the prime minister himself. Indeed he made an explicit link to his desire to have remained an “enthusiastic” supporter of the government as a backbencher and his forced defenestration.

He also very deliberately used his statement to condemn what he sees as the betrayal by Sunak of the policies that he championed in government, with a warning that the party will be punished in the polls.

“Just a few years after winning the biggest majority in almost half a century, that majority is now clearly at risk,” he said. “We must not be afraid to be a properly Conservative government. We need to deliver on the 2019 manifesto, which was endorsed by 14 million people.”

Johnson not only has no intention of going quietly but no intention of staying quiet either.

The Times