Boris Johnson could still survive – and this is how

It turns out that getting 54 Tory MPs to demand a vote of no confidence in their leader is harder than it looks, writes John Rentoul

Boris Johnson arrives to board an aircraft in London for a flight to Kiev, Ukraine (PA Wire)

Boris Johnson is doing something as difficult as that fairground game where you have to thread a hoop along an irregular-shaped wire without touching it. Touching the wire sets off a buzzer and you lose the game. Johnson has to get to the end of the wire, the election of 2024, without touching it, or he will be out of office.

It is possible that he could survive, with steady nerves and a bit of luck. He had an extraordinary stroke of luck in the bureaucratic snarl-up between the Metropolitan Police and Sue Gray, the civil servant investigating the alleged lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street. As a result most of the damaging detail was left out of Gray’s “update” yesterday. It was as if someone jogged Johnson’s elbow and accidentally got him round a tricky bend without touching the wire.

That bought time for another fightback. One element of it was a serious policy change that would probably have happened anyway: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, yesterday dropped the plan to sack unvaccinated NHS staff. That pleased one faction of Conservative MPs who could be persuaded that keeping Johnson is their best bet for avoiding new coronavirus restrictions.