The false favourite

Don’t bet on Boris Johnson leading the Conservative party again

I am not particularly body confident. I mean, I’m outwardly in perfectly respectable shape for a man of my age (the qualification doctors have long insisted on giving each time they bring the subject up) but I’m not going to be gracing any centrefolds any time soon.

So when I go to the baths in Budapest, I always have a lurking anxiety that others are judging me and finding me wanting. I remember the first time I went to the Széchenyi baths. I lay on my lounger, gawky and fidgety, watching the beautiful people walk round the pool. And they were beautiful, lean and toned and tanned. And there were so many of them.

Except, I eventually realised, there weren’t so many of them. The same handful were using the poolside as a catwalk, displaying their wares for their own self-satisfaction. Most other clients were doing just as I was, lying still and watching from the sidelines.

I’m reminded of that experience whenever I read one of the regular articles in the newspapers touting the possibility of Boris Johnson making a comeback as Prime Minister. “Supporters” — we are never given names — keep telling us that MPs are clamouring for his return. A challenge to Rishi Sunak is in the offing, we are told, perhaps after the May local elections. But it seems to be the same few headbangers going round in media circles, parading their wares to anyone gullible enough not to notice there’s nothing new.

Too many journalists, it seems, see themselves as sewerage to pass on whatever he wants to flush through, without doing the grubby bit of examining the contents. It’s about time someone started looking at this stinking pile of ordure. Since those paid to do so aren’t bothering, I will.

Let’s take the most recent example of the genre, from Dan Hodges. It isn’t the worst, but as we’ll see, it’s bad enough. It usefully shows up the numerous flaws in the boosters’ arguments.

The article begins in midstream (it appears to have been butchered by sub-editors):

“The only remaining question is when they will choose to strike. Most MPs think the challenge will come soon after the local elections in May. A few believe it could be in the autumn, around the time of the next Tory Party conference.”

Perhaps Dan Hodges had written preceding paragraphs dealing with the period from now till May. It would explain why “they” are not properly defined in either the article or the headline. Because Boris Johnson has a massive hurdle ahead of him in the shape of the Privileges Committee, and any article looking at his likely future must at least address that.

It is a curiosity that all these Boris-boosting pieces simply skip over the existence of that hurdle. Do they regard it as a formality? If so, they should say so. Boris Johnson himself evidently doesn’t because he’s hired Lord Pannick (at our expense, of course) to bombard the Committee with cod-legal points.

I’ve already written about how I think the Privileges Committee is going to do for Boris Johnson, so I won’t rehearse that argument again. If anything, things have got worse for him since I wrote that, with the emergence of that damning quote from him boasting about being at the “UK’s most unsocially distanced party”. It’s hard to square that with the claim that he had no idea that there had been any rule-breaking. I doubt the committee is going to go out of its way to try.

But let me indulge the Boris-boosters and assume that this hurdle will be surmounted. Are the May local elections going to be the crunch point? “Most MPs” appear to be ill-informed about their party’s own rules. Rishi Sunak became leader of the Conservative party on 24 October 2022. He is therefore — formally at least — immune from challenge for a year from then. That means that unless there is a rule change, neither the May local elections nor the party conference are going to be a catalyst for a leadership challenge.

This point mustn’t be overstated. The last three Conservative leaders all left office at a time when they were formally immune from challenge. If Rishi Sunak loses the confidence of the bulk of his MPs, he will go whether he is formally immune from challenge or not. It means, however, that the threshold is not “50 or so letters”, as Dan Hodges wrongly states, but 175 or so letters, in order to persuade the 1922 Committee executive that a change to the rules is required.

There seems no prospect of Boris Johnson fomenting that level of opposition to Rishi Sunak unless a lot more goes wrong than already has. Boris Johnson didn’t get anywhere near that level of support in October from MPs and one would expect MPs to be more disinclined to unhorse Rishi Sunak now that he is in office.

It’s not impossible that a lot more could go wrong — Liz Truss is a glaring example of that — but the best working assumption right now is that Rishi Sunak is practically safe from challenge until 24 October 2023. That takes all the air out of the Boris balloon.

OK, but what about after that? What indeed? I agree that Boris Johnson could arrange for 50 or so letters of no confidence to be sent to Sir Graham Brady whenever he chooses. So he can force a vote of no confidence whenever he likes after 24 October 2023. That’s not good enough.

For the target is not 50 or so letters, but to win a vote of no confidence in the Parliamentary party — ie to obtain the support of half the party. For that he needs to persuade some of the absolute majority of MPs who publicly backed Rishi Sunak in October last year to defect in a vote of no confidence (and remember that quite a few MPs couldn’t declare a preference because of their institutional place in the party or government) and scoop up all of the rest. I’m unaware of a single Conservative MP who has yet publicly regretted their choice. Until we get some buyers’ remorse, I’m going to be taking claims of support with snow gritters’ portions of salt.

“I’m told that at least seven senior former Cabinet Ministers are actively organising for Sunak’s removal”, Dan Hodges writes. Given the turnover in the Cabinet in the last year, that’s not much more than saying that seven MPs are actively organising for Rishi Sunak’s removal. Boris Johnson, Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel and Lord Frost are presumably five of them.

What about after the next election? Well, maybe, if he’s still in Parliament (unlikely in Uxbridge unless the Conservatives have kept power, and not certain even then). Curiously, his best chance of being next Conservative leader may well be if he is thrown out of Parliament by the Privileges Committee and then finds a safe seat to return in 2024 to a Conservative party in opposition.

Would he fancy the role without the trappings of office? I’m doubtful. But one thing I’m sure about: all the contingencies required to get him back as Conservative leader again are far longer than the best price of 11/2 that you can get on the proposition with the bookies (Betway if you disagree with me). I might be tempted at 15/1. For now, I’m laying him on Betfair instead.