In Delhi, Boris Johnson finally managed to ‘move on’ an inch or two from his lawbreaking

The prime minister tried to change the subject in India, but he knows that lockdown parties still threaten him, writes John Rentoul

He intended still to be prime minister by Diwali, in October, he said (Reuters)

The prime minister’s most heartfelt answer to journalists at his news conference in Delhi came in reply to a question about suggestions from British intelligence officials that the war in Ukraine could last until the end of next year, and that Russia could win.

“Yes, that is a realistic possibility, of course,” said Boris Johnson. Vladimir Putin has a “huge army” and the course of the war is unpredictable, he said, despite the “incredible heroism” of the Ukrainians.

It was as if he was speaking of his own war with his party. He intended still to be prime minister by Diwali, in October, he said in answer to another question, but he implied that, despite his willingness to fight, he had to be realistic about his unpredictable prospects. His enemies in parliament have a huge army and a lot of heavy weapons.

He was up against the odds, but let no one doubt his determination and his spirit, he seemed to be saying, even though he was talking about the Ukrainians. One thing we can be sure of, he said, is that Putin “will not be able to conquer the spirit of the Ukrainian people”.

He made a determined attempt to move on from questions about parties a long time ago in a country far, far away. Anushka Asthana of ITV News pointed out that opinion polls in the UK suggested he had suffered a “catastrophic loss of trust”, and compared him to a cat with nine lives, asking how many he had left.

“We had a fairly good kicking of cats yesterday and we did all that,” he said, referring to some spiky exchanges, particularly with Beth Rigby of Sky News – “not that I am in favour of kicking cats”, he hurriedly clarified.

He then burbled on about his discussions with the Indian prime minister whom he accidentally on purpose called “Narendra” because they are such good friends – “Prime Minister Modi”, he corrected himself – about “cyber, helicopters, space, a huge new contemporary agenda”.

Other journalists tried to penetrate his defences, pointing out that the British people felt strongly about his breaking of lockdown laws and wanted to hear from him about whether he had knowingly misled parliament about it. “What people want is for us to focus on getting on with the job,” he insisted. People are interested in jobs and the economy, and that was why he was talking to the Indian prime minister about clean growth, clean power and floating wind farms.

He was saved by the lack of any genuinely new questions to ask him, given that he had spent two hours in the Commons on Tuesday and another half an hour at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday answering most of the obvious ones.

And there are other important subjects about which the travelling press felt obliged to ask, even if they didn’t waste too much time on the details of trade deals that are always the notional agenda for trips such as these. Johnson was asked if India really was on the right side of the Ukraine conflict, to which he gave a diplomatic answer.

But he became positively lyrical about the “stunning, shining fact” of Indian democracy when challenged about Modi’s Hindu nationalism and his human rights record, saying that India has constitutional protections for all its communities and was “very different from autocracies around the world”.

He was also asked about the possibility of legislating to suspend parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, to which he gave a noncommittal answer, saying that the problems with the protocol could be solved with “some simple steps” and implying as usual that it was the EU side that was being difficult in refusing to take them.

He tried to give – and indeed mainly succeeded in giving – the impression of a national leader getting on with important affairs of the world, while everyone watching knew that he had to order a parliamentary surrender from abroad yesterday because his own MPs refused to support him.

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His battle for his own survival isn’t over yet and he could well lose. He urgently needs reinforcements.

Johnson told journalists that the UK was looking to “backfill” Poland’s reserves of tanks, so that Poland’s own T72s could be sent to Ukraine. He even, as a former journalist himself, helpfully told them that this was a story, saying he hadn’t said it in public before.

But who will “backfill” the operation to save his premiership? From where will new supplies of heavyweight political support come? He cannot look to an economic recovery and an easing of the cost of living crisis, not this side of Diwali, anyway.

He can only hope that by sheer unconquerable spirit he can squeeze a few more lives out of the not-yet-dead cat.