Boris is the Tories’ secret weapon? Really… how desperate is that?

The former PM took to the stage, a bleached wail in an ill-fitting suit, and did little to help Sunak avoid tomorrow’s inevitable drubbing, writes Sean O’Grady

Former prime minister Boris Johnson spoke on behalf of the Conservatives at the National Army Museum in London (PA)

Boris Johnson Saves the World is probably the movie that our disgraced former prime minister sees himself starring in as he ascends the stage at the National Army Museum in London, surrounded by the tattered colours and worn muskets of past battles lost and won – Waterloo, Dunkirk, Goose Green.

Here he is, then, the man of the hour, launching himself at his audience of the Tory just-about-still-faithful, firing aimlessly the usual fusillade of lazy rhetoric, lamentable jokes and shameless exaggerations at the Tories’ two principal threats. As Johnson sees it, their enemies are the “Putinistas” (Reform UK) about to help deliver “the Corbynistas” (Labour) a “supermajority”.

Johnson claims, not for the first time, that Keir Starmer is about to lead the “most left-wing government since the war”, which is such a preposterous claim it is very difficult to think that even Johnson, the man who gave us a record tax burden, actually believes it himself.

He made for an extraordinary spectacle. He obviously wasn’t preparing for this event. His speech was a mildly rehashed version of his most recent newspaper column – itself not the most considered of essays – and he looked like he’d emerged from a hedge that Carrie had recently pushed him into for some marital misdemeanour or other. A man with the morals of an alley cat and a complete lack of self-knowledge made some risky remarks about a Labour majority “pregnant with horrors”.

Boris Johnson looked like a more portly, more knackered version of Michael Fabricant, his pneumatic frame barely fitting into his clothes, face left cerise from the Mediterranean sun, eyes matchingly bloodshot, and his famous boyish mop of blond hair now grown white and threadbare. More than ever his habit of ruffling it up looks like a ruse to disguise the onset of male pattern baldness. Like his premiership was, the bloke’s a tangled mess, even if they still love him (though they can never love him as much as he loves himself).

The reality of course is that the familiar Morlock-like apparition in front of them is as much a reason for their current plight as anyone. They, and the remaining stubbornly adherent worshippers of the cult of Boris, saw in this museum piece the spirit and the triumph of 2019 – the “Get Brexit Done” election victory, the tantalising hope of “levelling up”, the vanquishing of Jeremy Corbyn.

The rest of us? Not so much. We remember Partygate. Letting “the dead pile high”. Recruiting and then defending Dominic Cummings. One rule for us, another rule for them. Wallpapergate. Chris Pincher and the other sleaze scandals. Lying to the Commons. Lying to the public (repeatedly). Being suspended from the Commons for lying, and then flouncing off to avoid taking his punishment like a man. Bunking off Cobra meetings. Botching a Brexit he never actually believed in.

He is repugnant to many people and his behaviour in office sufficient reason to get the Tories out now, when at last we’re given the chance. He is not, in truth, as much of an electoral asset as those who’ve been pining for him seem to think – more a clammy, waddling reminder of a massive betrayal of trust and of wasted promise.

For those in his party he’s let down, they would be entitled to ask: “Where have you been Boris, when your party and your nation needed you?” On holiday in Sardinia is of course the answer, rather than campaigning 24/7 to prevent what he calls “Starmergeddon”.

If Johnson is such a patriot and so eager to prevent this ultimate catastrophe striking Britain, then why do we only see him now? Because, as ever, Johnson puts his own ego before anything else, and he would only ever have turned up if Sunak had personally asked him – “If you are slightly surprised to see me, I want to be clear that I was glad when the PM asked me for help and I could not say no”.

Yet there was never anyone or anything stopping Johnson from going out and delivering leaflets (as Theresa May has been doing), or touring vulnerable constituencies (like David Cameron) – but he decided to sit it out because he’s still sore that Sunak brought him down.

Though the political sensitivities of his own party will never allow him to say it, Sunak’s resignation as chancellor in July 2022, which indeed forced Johnson out of No 10, was an act of public duty greatly to his credit. He was right about Johnson then when he said he’d quit because “the public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously”. Sunak was also right about Liz Truss being a disaster, and he has spent the last couple of years trying to clear things up after the pair of them.

It was always going to be too much for him. Partygate began their decline from hegemony, and the mini-Budget accelerated it. Sunak’s battle for an unprecedented fifth Tory term was lost before it began, and soon Rishi Sunak’s premiership too will be history.