Boris Johnson's resignation: yesterday's man or ready for a comeback?
‘Boris Johnson is yesterday’s man’, is the line that Number 10 is betting on to defuse the political instability that has been created by the departure of the former Prime Minister and some of his key allies from Parliament. As crisis management goes, it is a high risk, high reward strategy for a Prime Minister trying to brush one of his predecessors under the political carpet. High reward because when a politician is past their sell-by date, they can expect to be brushed off the shelf pretty swiftly, as Johnson discovered himself when his Party and cabinet swiftly forced him from office last July. The problem for Rishi Sunak is that if his predecessor continues to wield his influence and political strength in the coming days and weeks, then this line of attack could appear hollow, or even desperate, and will only encourage speculation that a political comeback for the former PM is on the cards. Is Boris Johnson ‘yesterday’s man’? Answering this question could be enough to understand how the Conservative Party will react to the departure of their most recent election winner.
Number 10’s attack might, at first, appear misplaced, because Boris Johnson has tried to constructed his present appeal around the very successes that Rishi Sunak wants us to think are in the past. His parliamentary resignation statement did not miss an opportunity to remind us of exactly what Johnson and his allies have been repeating ever since he resigned the Tory leadership last year: that his time in office oversaw the milestone achievements of “getting Brexit done” and “winning the biggest majority for 40 years”. Running through a list of successes from the previous decade might be a more effective strategy than it sounds: in today’s political climate, it could pay to be yesterday’s man. The cost-of-living crisis had not yet become a mainstay in the political lexicon; the mini-budget of last September and all its economic consequences was only a very distant pipe-dream for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng; and Boris had instilled Conservative and Conservative-leaning voters with a ‘feel good’ factor after Corbyn’s defeat and with Brexit delivered. While Rishi Sunak is struggling to reverse the Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes, many on the right of British politics are looking for a model for political success, and Boris Johnson’s past victories, he hopes, will ensure he can continue to call the shots on the political scene.
If it is Johnson’s election-winning persona as a ‘Heineken politician’ that has won him some devoted allies, it is also where his claims to enduring political relevance begin to fall apart. In the aftermath of the 2019 General Election, a triumphant Boris Johnson acknowledged that voters in the 45 formerly Labour, now Tory voting ‘Red Wall’ seats had only “leant” him their votes; Boris Johnson’s problem is that many of these voters now appear to have taken their support back. Both Sunak and Starmer have been registering higher poll ratings among Red Wall voters than Johnson. That is an existential threat to the former Prime Minister because he cannot credibly argue to be in a position to build another election-winning coalition without them, not least because his personal popularity across the whole country has plummeted after months of scandals from Partygate to Chris Pincher. Conservative MPs know this – it is why many moved so decisively against his Premiership in July last year and it is why Johnson felt the need to leave Parliament before he was pushed: his own backbench colleagues were going to be the ones doing the pushing. If Johnson sees his future as within the Tory Party, then he knows he has no viable route to the top, for now.
Even if the current political forecast appears unfavourable to the former Prime Minister, he has a resolute base of supporters in politics and in parts of the media that will allow him to take shelter and bide his time. If there is one thing that has defined Boris Johnson’s career, it is that he has waited out political developments on the side lines, choosing to re-emerge when most favourable for him. He took an eight-year hiatus while David Cameron had a grip on the Tory leadership and served as Mayor of London, before stepping into the public spotlight for the EU referendum; after his stint in Theresa May’s government he kept quiet on the backbenches for almost a year before running for Party leader. Despite being disarmed by his own backbenchers and the Privileges Committee investigation into Partygate, he is resigning from Parliament with plenty of arsenal left to try repeat this feat once again. He departure was not only met with the unequivocal backing of the Daily Mail, but also GB News, which is growing into a viewing competitor against established broadcasters and is jam-packed with Tory MP presenters, who have weighted their coverage significantly in his favour. They will not be going away as influential Conservative news sources, even if Boris Johnson intends to take some time out. For all the speculation that Johnson will seek to play a role outside of the Conservative Party in the upcoming general election, he may also be lying in-wait of a demoralising general election defeat for Sunak and his Party. Then, as Tory MPs are searching for a route out of opposition, and with parts of the right-wing press behind him, Johnson might be hoping that then will be his time to reassert his political influence in Conservative politics.
Sunak wants his backbenchers to believe that Boris Johnson is ‘yesterday’s man’, and with Johnson’s resignation from Parliament and the mute response from most of their colleagues, he could well be right. But Boris Johnson does still have a shot at being ‘tomorrow’s man’ if the government cannot catch up to Labour in the arena of public opinion. A lot still depends on whether the Conservatives can squash the narrative of a ‘Tory psychodrama’ and rally together in the months to come. On that front, Rishi Sunak must now know that Boris Johnson’s departure has only left more work to be done.
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