INSIDE WESTMINSTER: How 'coiled mamba' Boris could come back to save the Tories ... trends now
Boris is like a coiled black mamba, ready to strike,’ says an ally of the former prime minister. ‘He is watching David Cameron stride cheerfully around the world stage, while he sits in exile and the party’s poll ratings sink lower and lower. They brought back the wrong ex-PM.’
But Boris Johnson is in a bind, and the mamba remains coiled – at least for now.
He is loving domestic life in his moated manor house deep in the Oxfordshire countryside with wife Carrie and their three children, and watching his post-Downing Street earnings head towards the £8 million mark. His column in yesterday’s Daily Mail was dedicated to the plight of Donny the duckling – a world away from Westminster’s venomous snakes.
For now, Boris Johnson is loving domestic life with wife Carrie. They are pictured on a ski trip last month
Johnson supporters say the local election results showed a ‘Boris bounce’ in the form of victory for Tory Mayor Ben Houchen on Teesside after Johnson made a ‘targeted’ intervention on social media for him.
Johnson regarded the move as an act of ‘personal loyalty’, as he had been ‘supportive’ during his premiership.
It has led even One Nation MPs on the Left of the party to consider calling for Johnson’s help in their constituencies. One moderate said: ‘Having Boris out there urging people not to split the vote by voting for Reform is powerful. With others, the reaction is, “He would say that, wouldn’t he”. But Boris can sell it.’
While Johnson hasn’t completely ruled out a pre-Election return to Parliament and the party leadership, time is fast running out for such a dramatic move.
His most likely course of action will be to watch and wait until Sir Keir Starmer has marched into Downing Street – and found out how tricky it is to wield power with the finances so stretched.
Then, after an interim Tory leader such as former home secretary Priti Patel has tried to steady the ship for a couple of years, he could sweep in and save the party.
‘By then he would finally have resolved his financial problems,’ says the ally.
‘He would be a better prime minister with that no longer on his mind.’ Johnson turns 60 next month; no longer in the first flush, certainly, but 17 years younger than his hero Winston Churchill when he became prime minister for the second time.
However, with the most recent YouGov poll putting the party on 18 per cent, just 3 per cent ahead of Nigel Farage’s band of Reform UK renegades, the danger is that there will not be a party left for him to lead.
This dire figure could fall even lower if Farage, as many expect, throws his hat personally into the Election ring by standing in Clacton, where local polling suggests he could finally win a parliamentary seat.
So, Johnson’s attention is turning to how he can shore up the Conservatives’ performance at the Election, without making it a hollow-sounding personal endorsement of Rishi Sunak.
His friends say it ‘is about helping the party – not Rishi’. One says: ‘Sunak has still not picked up the phone to ask him to help out. So it will be about defending the party’s values versus Labour. He wants to fire bullets at Starmer, but hasn’t been given the ammunition by Sunak.’ A source in the anti-Rishi camp says that ‘it is hard for Boris to tie himself to Rishi given that he has been texting rebel MPs to say “I agree with every word you have said” when they publicly criticise the Prime Minister’.
An ally added: ‘All the party grandees thought it was a coup bringing back Cameron as Foreign Secretary, but that was never
