Could 2023 be the year Boris Johnson returns as prime minister?

Will the nation cry out for the charisma and chaos of the lost leader to be restored to No 10, asks John Rentoul

Johnson’s supporters thought that the chance for their wronged hero’s return had come too early after Truss (Reuters)

Boris Johnson loves to tease his enemies. Writing the diary in the Christmas edition of The Spectator, which he used to edit, he spoke of the “unexpected hiatus in my career”. He signed off from the office of prime minister by speaking of Cincinnatus, the Roman senator who was recalled from his plough when the republic needed him, and saying, “Hasta la vista, baby!”

He has a band of supporters dedicated to securing his return to office. This month the Conservative Democratic Organisation was launched to campaign for grassroots members to “take back control” of the Tory party. Its leading lights, notably Peter Cruddas, the billionaire raised to the peerage by Johnson against the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, want a re-run of the Tory leadership election among party members, and with Johnson as a candidate.

Some of Johnson’s supporters are excited that Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, said in an interview this week that Johnson had 110 MPs supporting his nomination for the leadership election in October. This was more than the 102 needed to put him on the ballot paper, which was previously assumed to be the limit of Johnson’s support.

Even so, it was still only 31 per cent of MPs, compared with the 197 who publicly declared for Rishi Sunak (55 per cent), and Johnson rightly concluded: “You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament.” (Even then, he prefaced his withdrawal by saying he could have won: “There is a very good chance that I would be successful in the election with Conservative Party members – and that I could indeed be back in Downing Street on Friday.”)

Despite his withdrawal, many of his supporters insist that he was the victim of a fix; that he was betrayed by Sunak when he resigned from the cabinet in July; and that the “coronation” of Sunak was a conspiracy against justice.

Johnson’s supporters thought that Liz Truss’s government had collapsed too quickly, and that the chance for their wronged hero’s return had come too early. But they have a plan, which is that after the local elections in May next year, when the Conservatives do badly, the scales will fall from the eyes of the party and the nation, and the clamour to Bring Back Boris will grow too great for Sunak to resist.

I thought for a moment that there might be some popular support for this idea when I saw Ipsos’s opinion poll asking people what they expected in politics in 2023: nearly half (46 per cent) said they thought it likely that Sunak would cease to be prime minister during the next year.

But it turned out that this was mostly because 50 per cent thought it likely that there will be a general election in 2023. I suppose that is a reasonable belief, given the turmoil of the past year, but it is extremely unlikely when you consider that we have reverted to the rule that prime ministers decide when elections will be.

So, most of those who expect Sunak to be out during 2023 think he will be replaced by Keir Starmer in a general election. Only 16 per cent of British adults think it likely that Johnson will be prime minister again by the end of 2023. That is a high number, considering how unusual that manoeuvre would be, but it hardly represents a groundswell of support for the British Cincinnatus.

Indeed, if we look at the numbers more closely, those predicting Johnson’s return are not all describing what they want to happen. People who voted Conservative and Labour last time were just as likely to predict that Johnson would return. So there must be at least as many Labour supporters – and many Conservative supporters – who fear that Johnson is going to return as Bring Boris Backers who hope it will happen.

Have I got news for them. Some of my predictions for 2022, which I reviewed yesterday, were shaky. But I do not need to hedge my bets on this one. Boris Johnson is not coming back. Not in 2023, or 2024, or any other year. He has his qualities; he may even have been necessary to get Brexit done; but he wasn’t good enough as a prime minister to overcome the suspicion that the British people have developed towards him.

The hiatus in his career may have been unexpected to him, but it came as no surprise to the rest of us; his career as prime minister is over.