Will Boris Johnson copy Donald Trump and seek a route back to power? Whether Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss becomes Prime Minister, only one thing is certain. The new Prime Minister will have to face the Labour leader Keir Starmer in a general election by 2024. If Labour wins after 14 years of the Conservative government, it is just possible there might be a move to draft Boris back as the Tory party leader who won an 80-seat majority in 2019.
Already, more than 4,000 members of the Conservative party have backed a petition co-sponsored by Lord Cruddas, a Tory donor, demanding that members be given their own confirmatory vote on Boris’s future. Cruddas has lived up to his name by retweeting some crude comments about Sunak.
The Times reported: “Cruddas, 68, who remains close to Boris, has shared posts on social media describing Sunak as a ‘rat’, ‘a snake’, a ‘little weasel’, a ‘backstabber’, ‘a slimy snake’, a ‘treacherous snake’, ‘Fishy Rishi’, ‘Hissy Rishi’, ‘Judas’, ‘the traitor’, ‘the Remainer’s choice’, a ‘sly assassin’, a ‘Tory wet’ promoting high taxes and the leader of a ‘coup who ‘must be removed at all costs. Cruddas also retweeted claims about the financial affairs of Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty.
The sheer vitriol of the claims has stunned allies of Sunak and has led many to question why elements of the Tory party are trying to destroy the reputation of one of its brightest and most hard-working talents.” Cruddas has now written an article for the Daily Telegraph, headlined: “It’s not too late to keep Boris Johnson. At the very least, we owe Conservative members a simple yes/no vote on whether to accept their leader’s resignation.”
He said: “We must not underestimate the sheer indignation amongst members, who are sending emails in their thousands to the Conservative party chairman demanding a Boris ballot. It cannot be in the party’s best interests to ignore its members and invalidate their previous votes. If I were either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, I would see the leadership at this stage as a poisoned chalice, a pyrrhic victory which could lead to anger and division within the Conservative party and leave us in the political wilderness for a generation. “And all because, ultimately, Boris Johnson was removed by around 50 MPs who, through a herd-mentality series of resignations, were able to unseat our Prime Minister at a time of crisis, despite his record of winning millions of votes and without the formal approval of party members. What a shower.”
Talk of Boris’s return at this stage is fantasy politics. Although Boris has said he will not publicly support either Truss or Sunak, behind the scenes it is more than likely his personal animosity towards his former chancellor will be communicated to Tory party members. The parliamentary party wants Sunak to win but the membership — somewhere between 160,000 and 200,000 (the exact figure is unknown) — might decide otherwise. The Financial Times says Truss starts as the “slim favourite”, while the Daily Telegraph insists it is “advantage Truss”. The latter’s page one picture of Truss has the Sri Lankan origin international trade minister Ranil Jayawardena clapping enthusiastically. The Goan-origin Suella Braverman is also backing Truss, while the Pakistani-origin former health secretary Sajid Javid has not disclosed who he is backing.
