Tory MPs who want Boris Johnson back should be careful what they wish for

If Johnson reaches the shortlist of two names for an online ballot of party members, he will probably win, writes Andrew Grice

Johnson allies are confident he can secure the necessary nominations by 100 Tory MPs by Monday (AP)

“I never dreamed she would be so bad at it,” one cabinet minister who joined the Gadarene rush to support Liz Truss for the Tory leadership told me ruefully.

Nor did I. I thought Truss, the rebel never without a cause, would temper her revolutionary zeal when she got to Downing Street. Instead, she opted for all or nothing, and quickly ended up with nothing. She launched an experiment on the British people with the theories her favoured right-wing libertarian think tanks had peddled for years, with little expectation they would ever be introduced in one go. Even they were amazed when Truss did so.

“We are the softies now,” one prominent think tanker whispered after the fantasy politics of last month’s mini-Budget collided with reality.

Some saw the Truss implosion coming. Dominic Cummings, once Boris Johnson’s most senior aide, who branded Truss a “human hand-grenade,” suspected Johnson did everything he could to help her succeed him because: “He knows Truss is a box of snakes and is thinking, ‘there’s a chance she blows, there’s another contest and I can return.’”

It doesn’t look like a mad theory now. Remarkably, Johnson’s allies are confident he can secure the necessary nominations by 100 Tory MPs by Monday to become a candidate to succeed Truss. If Johnson reaches the shortlist of two names for an online ballot of party members, he will probably win.

Yet perhaps Johnson’s cunning plan was too clever by half. The human hand-grenade has blown up her government too quickly for him; the privileges committee inquiry into whether he lied to parliament hangs over him and could even cost him his Commons seat. What then? Another Tory leadership contest. Perhaps it would then be Truss’s turn to make an incredible comeback (only joking this time).

Many panicky Tory MPs have convinced themselves Johnson could save their seats. But they are in denial about his unpopularity with the public. Even a majority of Tory voters wanted him to resign this summer.

He would be a divisive figure when the party desperately needs to unite: several MPs would resign the Tory whip if he returned as PM. As they point out, it wasn’t just the lies but the incompetence when he was PM. Johnson had his chance and blew it. He does not deserve another one.

The other reason Johnson helped Truss succeed him was to stop Rishi Sunak, the favourite. He will now ape Truss by being the “stop Rishi” candidate this time. Just as Truss (falsely) blamed Sunak for bringing down Johnson, his supporters (falsely) accuse Sunak of deposing Truss because he was a bad loser. Sunak has more Tory enemies than he deserves; he and Penny Mordaunt might need to join forces to “stop Boris” for the sake of the party and the country.

Johnson is not the right man to take over in an economic crisis. His instinct when faced with difficult decisions like tax rises or spending cuts is to put off a decision. He won his big election victory in 2019 on a ticket of higher spending and no tax rises. The financial markets will not accept such cakeism now.

In contrast, Sunak displayed the fiscal responsibility the markets demand during this summer’s leadership election, accurately predicting the chaos that the “fairytale economics” Truss advocated would cause.

I watched 11 of the 12 Truss vs Sunak hustings events for Tory members (it felt like a box set when you watched episode one over and over again). Sunak won them all on points. He lost the election because Tory members were allowed to vote early in the process before they had really seen the candidates and because many members bought the spin he had betrayed Johnson.

The sense of relief among Tory MPs that Truss is departing might prove short-lived. The public will not forget or forgive the damage she caused in her short, destructive spell in power. They will blame the Tories for their higher mortgages, rents, energy bills and taxes and for the impact of spending cuts. They will not care that two-thirds of her government’s economic medicine was needed to treat global problems.

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Even if a new PM steadies the ship, and the economy is recovering by a 2024 general election, I’m sure one thing will be uppermost in voters’ minds then: the Tories crashed the economy. The Tories (unfairly) blamed Labour for the 2008 global financial crisis, using it as cover for the coalition government’s austerity measures. In contrast, the Tories will deserve the blame they get for the catastrophic mini-Budget.

We don’t need a crystal ball to see how the current box set ends because we can read the book. The last time the Tories lost their reputation for economic competence was on Black Wednesday in 1992, when the UK was evicted from the European exchange rate mechanism. Although the economy had recovered by the election five years later, the voters had already made their minds up.

There was no way back for the Tories then, and there will be no way back this time.