Put a stake through this vampire’s heart now

Boris Johnson leaves only political death or injury in his wake so a return could kill the party and would wound the country.

Can Tory MPs really be contemplating supporting the scoundrel who only weeks ago they rightly dumped, asks Matthew Parris?

Boris? Again? That charlatan? They cannot be serious. Kipling was not wrong: “The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire/ And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.”

Can Tory MPs really be contemplating supporting the scoundrel who only weeks ago they rightly dumped?

Have they so quickly forgotten why they dumped him? The rascal whose short second administration mislaid 80 ministers, 55 of them within three days only this summer, more than tripling parliament’s previous record for mass resignations?

The hedgies’ poodle who first proposed the idea that helped to kill his successors’ budget: slashing taxes for the rich? The dissimulator charged with lying to parliament and now at risk of being suspended as an MP by the privileges committee, and even kicked out in a by-election.A return for the “king over the water” (in this case the Caribbean)?

I say again, really? Boris, the impostor who just before his fall earned (in a YouGov poll) a public approval rating of minus 53 per cent?

Has his party already forgotten its drubbing under Boris Johnson’s leadership at the local government elections in May this year? Or the by-elections lost in Chesham & Amersham and Tiverton & Honiton?

Johnson was never a crowd pleaser except as an entertainer. He was never a notably popular prime minister. All the polling says the same: he carries no conviction and isn’t even widely liked.

How, then, are his supporters persuading colleagues to take him seriously?

Two linked efforts are afoot this weekend. They mirror the tactics that pushed Liz Truss over the line.

Momentum is being manufactured through creating an impression that Johnson is already on his way to victory. Mysterious reports on social media suggest he’s surging ahead among those MPs who are declaring - but the identities of some of these are undisclosed.

They will (we’re assured) reveal themselves “later”.

The sense of movement this creates is giving those many Conservative MPs who still keep their own counsel the idea that this man is a winner, and (say quieter MPs to themselves), “we’d better declare for him early, as we know he rewards supporters and freezes out the rest”.

Exaggerating his progress then swells his declared support, giving Tory activists the (false) idea that Johnson is popular among MPs - thus influencing their own vote because they rightly wish to back someone the parliamentary party wants as its leader.

This is precisely what happened when Truss ran for the leadership, and MPs who I know thought her useless started issuing statements praising her to the skies. Tory activists saw and digested this praise.

It is not certain she would have won without that skilful creation of a self-reinforcing loop of prediction, careerist flattery, and gullible activists.

Sir Graham Brady and his 1922 committee have done the nation no favours by missing the opportunity this crisis presented to sidestep the party membership.

No conspiracist in normal times, I have become convinced Johnson and his gang promoted Truss’s candidacy not because they thought she was any good but because they knew she wasn’t. Her failure was to be the launchpad for his return.

I cannot disclose what has persuaded me Johnson thought she’d fail, but it confirmed all my suspicions. He knew that only against the backdrop of total mess could he look good.I’m a Midlander whose own former constituency is almost surrounded by red-wall seats.

To new Tory MPs from such seats - the 2019-ers - I would earnestly advise this: don’t let the recent shudder of sellers’ remorse among Tory activists unbalance your judgment. “I miss Boris” is more nostalgic than future-facing, but we do hear it widely repeated, especially from committed Tories and (I’m afraid to say) the posher sort who think Boris “fun”.He may be; but talk to the uncommitted.

Rishi Sunak may lack the charisma of Boris Johnson but is known ot have a strong grasp of the economy.

You’ll hear the view, of course, that we can imagine having a beer with him, but listen harder and you’ll pick up the deep suspicion that he’s a scamp and a rogue. In easy times a scamp in Downing Street is good theatre.

But easy times do not lie ahead, and to voters beginning to agonise about whether their mortgage lender might repossess, politics is about more than drinking companions. Johnson may seem funny now but he won’t this winter.

Rishi Sunak may lack comedy genius, but we’ll appreciate his seriousness, his intelligence and grasp when power cuts threaten.As for Johnson, he’s just playing with us again. If he loses, or withdraws, it’s only a game.

But if he wins, it’s still a game. Whatever, we’ll be talking about him, and for Johnson that’s the thrill. Failure would be a pity but obscurity would be worse. Fame or infamy - it’s all in the mix for Johnson because both bring what Johnson most wants: attention.

There’s a part of this man that would enjoy the walk to the scaffold: centre stage to the last. Weighed against the horror of being forgotten, Johnson sees the upside of a car crash.For his party, however, and for the country, the downside is scary indeed. The last thing Britain needs now is a leader who doesn’t know or care about business, economics or even simple book-keeping.

That Rishi Sunak, the (quite close) runner-up to Truss, is vastly, incomparably better placed not only to take Britain’s finances through the awful storm ahead but (achingly absent from today’s politics) to impart a sense of seriousness to the running of a country seems so obvious that I have to pinch myself to believe I’m even writing about a possible forthcoming Johnson administration.In his wake, Johnson leaves only political death or injury. His victory next week could kill the party and would wound the country.

Except temporarily, nobody prospers from their association with this man. List all those who’ve been drawn into his close association, personal or political, and ask yourself who among them has found in his company a springboard to their own political success or personal happiness.

He has the quality of a vampire: he must kill to live.“With Boris it isn’t over until it’s over . . . it is now up to his party to see to that,” I wrote here three months ago. “Not,” (I said) “until there’s a stake through his heart can we be sure he’s gone.”I write it again today, with greater urgency.

Sometimes in history we read of an obvious deceiver who just kept cheating his way upwards into fame and power, and say to ourselves, “How shameful we were fooled!” Well, my Tory backbench friends, save yourselves that shame. Stop him now.

The Times