Did Rishi Sunak really mean to suggest Boris Johnson could make a comeback?

The prime minister couldn’t rule out a return to cabinet for his predecessor-but-one – but that doesn’t make it likely to happen, says John Rentoul

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak leave 10 Downing Street in 2020 when they were prime minister and chancellor, respectively (PA)

Rishi Sunak has been subjected to the personal profile treatment by ITV, featuring a previously unseen photo of him as a boy in front of a caravan... and an interview with Anushka Asthana in which he “doesn’t rule out” Boris Johnson returning to the cabinet.

“Doesn’t rule out” is being used in the journalistic sense, in which he also “didn’t rule out” flying to Mars and back in time for tea. It was not so much that Sunak “didn’t rule out” Johnson following Lord Cameron back to the front rank, but that he didn’t answer the question at all.

He told Asthana: “I’m proud of the work that we did together. And we worked well together for a long time…”

When Asthana challenged him: “You didn’t answer whether you’d have him back,” the prime minister replied: “Well, I never talk about these personnel things.” Then he changed the subject: “But look, I, you know, I speak to him on occasion.”

That distracted his interviewer, who inevitably wanted to know when the two last spoke. “I can’t remember, probably late last year,” said Sunak, as unhelpfully as he could. But ITV had its scoop.

So what are the chances of Boris returning?

Next to zero, for the next few years at least. Sunak is not going to bring him into the cabinet via the House of Lords – not least because Johnson’s strengths lie in campaigning rather than in ministerial grip.

But it is Johnson’s appeal as a campaigner that accounted for Sunak’s guarded answer. What the prime minister does not want is his predecessor out campaigning against him during the general election. His predecessor may not be the Heineken force he once was in politics, but he still has his dwindling band of followers among MPs and grassroots Tory members.

Hence Sunak’s reflex politeness, playing down the “well-documented differences” between the two of them.

What about a Boris comeback after the election?

Anyone who has studied Johnson’s career in any detail should know that being leader of the opposition would have limited appeal for him. Not only would he have to get back into parliament through a by-election – and he ran away from the prospect of a by-election in his Uxbridge seat that he probably would have won – but he would find it impossible to earn the kinds of sums he currently commands for after-dinner speaking, producing columns and writing books.

The books, in particular, would be a problem. He signed a contract in January last year with Harper Collins to write a memoir, rumoured to be for more than £1m, and he still has a deal with Hodder and Stoughton to produce a book about Shakespeare, originally with the title The Riddle of Genius, that was deferred “for the foreseeable future” when he became prime minister in 2019.

Much as Johnson may still dream of being summoned by popular acclaim from his plough, like Cincinnatus, the Roman leader whose name he cited on his way out of No 10, it may be that the attractions of “chicken feed”, as he once jokingly described his £250,000 second salary for a weekly newspaper column, may frustrate his return to what he still thinks of as his rightful place.