Anyone who’s been asking whether Boris Johnson is really now “version 2.0”, as his supporter Nadhim Zahawi claimed in a magnificently timed Daily Telegraph endorsement published precisely two minutes after he pulled out of the race, only had to look at his statement for an answer.
Johnson explained how popular he was with the public, said he would probably have won if he had stayed in, and appeared to blame Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt’s refusal to cooperate for the nation’s loss. And he made a claim about how many people he had supporting him which many thought sounded like a stretch. If Johnson 2.0 is a narcissist with an appetite for a betrayal narrative and a questionable relationship with the truth, you might think he needed more than 47 days to work on the upgrade.
Johnson said that if he had stayed in, he “could indeed be back in Downing Street on Friday”. Here’s why he pulled out instead.
Not enough support from MPs
Right up until he bowed to the inevitable, Johnson’s allies were not just claiming that he could reach the 100 nomination threshold among MPs required – but that he had already crossed it. On Saturday, the BBC’s Chris Mason reported a campaign source saying that 100 supporters had been found. On Sunday, Johnson’s former chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris told a campaign WhatsApp group that they had the necessary nominations “to be on the ballot tomorrow”. Even in his exit statement, Johnson said 102 MPs were backing him.
Strange, then, that Johnson felt the need to hold “unity talks” with both of his rivals over the weekend. The briefing after the Sunak meeting suggested it did not go well: whereas a Sunak ally told the Sun that he was “keen to engage with any and all Tory MPs”, a Johnson source quoted in the FT said the former Chancellor needed to “put on his ‘big boy trousers’”. (This after beaming Johnson supporters praised him for tucking his shirt in at a meeting, which is very grown up of their little soldier.)
Strange, too, that only about 60 of those 102 MPs have backed Johnson publicly. His allies claimed that this was because many held party positions that meant they couldn’t go public; his rivals were deeply sceptical about this claim, suspecting instead that it was designed to foster the sense that his campaign was alive and kicking even as the votes piled up for Sunak. Even if the missing 42 supporters did exist, it’s not a great sign if the supposed Shy Tories phenomenon now extends to Tory MPs as well.
In the breathless early stages of the campaign (which is to say, Friday: here’s a useful timeline), it was reported that the 60 members of the hardline European Research Group would meet today at 10.30am to discuss who to back – and they might have been expected to break disproportionately towards Johnson. But the sense that this race was Sunak’s to lose was as much about the identity of his backers as the numbers he commands.
With right-wing Brexit supporters like Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch and Steve Baker all coming out for Johnson’s chief rival over the weekend, a powerful narrative was emerging that only a very narrow slice of the parliamentary party was behind the former prime minister. And when Suella Braverman is ditching you with a warning about “parochial and nativist fantasies”, the path to victory looks slim indeed.
The news last night that Jeremy Hunt was also about to come out with an endorsement of Sunak – rather hurtfully comparing him, rather than Johnson, to Winston Churchill – was another bit of writing on the wall. One sentence in Johnson’s statement had the unimpeachable ring of truth: “You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament.” He didn’t.
Too much risk of humiliation
This part of the equation was left out of Johnson’s explanation – but it’s hard to discount. If Johnson had stayed in, there appears every chance he would have fallen short of the magic 100 number, an excruciating failure to meet even the minimum standard. If he had crossed that threshold, he would then have had to endure an indicative vote among MPs which might have seen him with more than two-thirds of the parliamentary party against him.
If he had decided to persevere despite being firmly told by the Westminster party that he wasn’t wanted, the next step would have been to test the reality of his purported popularity among party members – and yet 43% of them went for Sunak against Truss, and as Fraser Nelson suggests in this piece, at least some of the rest “want a semi-functional government and will have noticed that Johnson was ultimately unable to achieve this”.
Assume he had won: Johnson would then have had to govern in the post-Truss world of brutal economic choices, as this piece by Rowena Mason about the next prime minister’s in-tray makes clear. He would have faced the threat of defections within his own party and even the possibility of a byelection if the House of Commons privileges committee found that he misled MPs over Partygate. Johnson’s defining virtue as the presiding spirit of the Brexit campaign was arriving at the right place, at the right time. With the litany of problems that would have faced him on day one, the steps of Downing Street next Friday appear to be neither.
Hopes of another shot
Johnson’s resignation statement in July was laced with hints about his dissatisfaction at the manner of his exit, and his possible future return: you will remember the reference to Cincinattus, the Roman emperor who stood down but later came back again. He hit a similar note last night, plainly implying that he believes himself to be the best man for the job and reaching a conclusion that maintains his carefully burnished mythology as prince across the water: “I believe I have much to offer but I am afraid that this is simply not the right time.”
The message senior Tories have been trying to send Johnson, Katy Balls reported in the Spectator (£) last night, is “that by bowing out now, he could make a comeback in the future”. And in the Daily Telegraph (£) on Saturday, Charles Moore wrote: “I can see Boris storming back in different circumstances, with a Labour government in disarray and a lacklustre Tory opposition seeking renewal. I don’t see it working right now. True Boris fans will have the courage to tell him to sit this one out.”
In truth, leader of the opposition doesn’t sound like a very Johnsonian gig – and it is perhaps more likely that this really is the end of his status as a serious political contender. There was another sharp little line in the response put out by the Sunak camp last night: “I truly hope he continues to contribute to public life at home and abroad.” In the end, “true Boris fans” may not mind that very much – and he may not either. The great thing about being the prince across the water is, you can go on holiday to the Dominican Republic as much as you like.
