A confidence vote on Boris Johnson as party leader is now inevitable

Even if he survives a confidence vote, Boris Johnson could emerge severely weakened

The prime minister just can’t help himself with another display of contempt for the rules (PA)

Boris Johnson’s dispute with Christopher Geidt, his adviser on ministerial interests, will fuel the growing revolt by Conservative MPs.

The prime minister can’t help himself. He has again displayed his contempt for the rules designed to uphold standards in public life. Geidt threatened to resign when Johnson refused to even consider whether his Partygate fine might have breached the ministerial code. In a public rebuke, Geidt warned the code is at risk of “ridicule”.

The ethics watchdog, a former private secretary to the Queen, is regarded as the politest person in Whitehall. But he has teeth, even though Johnson stubbornly refuses to give him the untrammelled power to launch investigations into ministers’ conduct he wants and needs. Geidt might still quit, although the government is denying it today. He is in a strong position because Johnson is in a weak one. The PM has already lost one ministerial adviser, Alex Allan, who resigned when Johnson refused to sack Priti Patel when Allan ruled she had broken the code by allegedly bullying staff.

Perhaps Johnson would brush off Geidt’s resignation with a characteristic swish of his hand. It might not move the markets in the Dog and Duck. But this latest row over Partygate does matter to the constituency Johnson urgently needs – his MPs. Almost 50 want him to resign. For some, it was not the No 10 parties or Sue Gray’s findings but Johnson’s response to them.

One MP told me: “It was ‘sorry, not sorry’ again. How on earth could be claimed he had been vindicated?” For others, the scales tipped against the PM when he diluted the ministerial code two days after the Sue Gray report, which they saw as putting two fingers up to the standards system.

Johnson is damaging his survival prospects, even as he launches another desperate attempt to save his skin. He is ringing round backbenchers during the Commons half-term break, deploying the old trick of a forthcoming reshuffle – in which, of course, they might just win promotion if they “stick with me” now. Some Tories even detect an implied threat Johnson would call a snap general election if he narrowly survived in a confidence vote.

This is the Blazing Saddles manoeuvre: the sheriff in Mel Brooks’ film said: “If you don’t do what I want, I’ll blow my brains out.” An election in which the Tories’ majority was bound to be sharply reduced wouldn’t happen; even our supine cabinet would surely turn against Johnson to prevent it.

A vote of confidence in Johnson as party leader is inevitable. It could come next week; if it doesn’t, it will probably happen after the two by-elections on 23 June in Wakefield, and Tiverton and Honiton. If, as I expect, the Tories lose both, the momentum against the PM could become unstoppable.

A double defeat in the north and the southwest would illustrate Johnson’s problem: the remarkable coalition of voters he forged in 2019 is breaking apart. I’ve been looking at the regional breakdown of the latest opinion polls. The Tories trail badly to Labour in the north and are in trouble in their southern heartlands. Johnson’s personal ratings have bombed across the country.

It’s the same story among Tory MPs. His opponents are from across the party, left and right, Leavers and Remainers, and range from the red wall in the north and Midlands to the blue wall in the south.

Johnson’s allies claim there is a media “grid” of daily announcements of Tories coming out against him but that is not the case. The plot is that there is no plot, as MPs make individual decisions. It is much harder for government whips to head off an invisible rebellion.

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To make matters worse, Johnson is alienating his party’s left and right factions at the same time. Those on the left detest the taste of the red meat he throws at right-wingers, such as sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda; bringing back grammar schools; opening the door to fracking; privatising Channel 4 and the return of imperial measurements. But the Tory right is just as unhappy. The windfall tax on the oil and gas companies sticks in the craw. Right-wingers are also appalled the party has broken its 2019 manifesto pledge not to raise taxes, complains it has “no agenda” and fears it is Labour-lite.

In surviving storms that would have blown away most of his predecessors, Johnson has used the weapon of time well. The Metropolitan police investigation bought him precious time on Partygate. He used well the reprieve of war in Ukraine, but the endless conflict is now fading in Tory MPs’ minds.  With no end in sight to the Partygate saga, time is no longer on his side and even though there is no obvious successor, many Tory MPs want to take matters into their own hands.

Even if he survives a confidence vote with the help of about 170 loyalists in the “payroll vote” of ministers and their parliamentary aides, Johnson could emerge severely weakened. His party could be ungovernable, as Theresa May discovered after winning a confidence vote in 2018; she resigned six months later. In contrast, Johnson has no shame and would soldier on. But his time is unmistakably running out.