By Ben Kerrigan-
Boris Johnson has landed in the UK after an emergency return from his Caribbean holiday in the expectation of launching a bid to replace Liz Truss in Downing Street just weeks after he left office in a mire of scandal.
After enjoying a two-week break in the Dominican Republic with his family, Johnson land at Gatwick on Saturday morning (October 22). His flight left Antigua at 9.16pm local time and arrived in England at 10.26am today.
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His former deputy Dominic Raab, who is among more than 100 Tory MPs backing Rishi Sunak in the race for No 10, warned that electing Mr Johnson would plunge the government back into “the Groundhog Day … the soap opera, of Partygate” – given that he faces a parliamentary inquiry over the scandal. How many mps hold views consistent with that of Mr. Rabb, is yet to be seen.
With roughly half that number of nominations, Mr Johnson is trailing Mr. Sunak and is expected to officially enter the race as he returned from his holiday in the Dominican Republic, taken outside of parliamentary recess, telling former trade minister Sir James Duddridge that “we are going to do this”.
Mr Johnson was reportedly booed by at least a couple of fellow passengers on his flight to the UK, as a number of Tory MPs suggested they would resign the whip if the “utterly divisive” former PM was reinstated. But the former prime minister, who became leader of the conservative party with one of the biggest majorities ever, still has a lot of support among mps. The support is not as high as it was when he became prime minister, since he has lost a fair number in the wake of the partygate scandal. An estimated 60 members of his government deemed him too dishonest to lead the party, so the question now is if he has enough support to back his return to Downing Street.
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The series of scandals and accusations suggesting Johnson had broken ministerial rules by being about Covid lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street makes it a terrible idea to even consider bring Mr.Johnson back to government, but some feel only he can united a very divided and battered party. How he can unite those strongly against his leadership defies common reasoning, but insiders believe the former prime minister has his way of appeasing even his strongest critics in parliament.
Polls taken in the final days of Liz Truss’ premiership have consistently shown Mr Johnson as the most popular successor.
Patrick English, Associate Director of polling company YouGov, said the Conservative party are calling out for “someone who can provide unity and pull the party back together and compete again Labour leader Keir Starmer.
“If you ask the members who that could be – it is Boris Johnson,” Mr English said.
“If Mr Johnson goes to the final two, he’s got the edge.”
Johnson had 148 of his colleagues vote against him in a confidence vote in June, accompanied by nearly 60 ministerial resignations one month later.
The final nail in the coffin was news that Mr Johnson had ignored accusations of sexual misconduct against Chris Pincher before appointing him deputy chief whip.
Some Conservative sources told ITV that if Boris Johnson returns as prime minister he could be ‘gone by Christmas’, due to damning new evidence about the partygate scandal which brought him down. The issue surrounding the Privileges Committee’s investigation is whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over parties in No10
They say that a large amount of damaging evidence from inside No10 has already been handed over to Harriet Harman, who is chairing the inquiry.
Boris Johnson is “undeniably one of the great political figures of our generation”, Tory MP Paul Bristow has claimed.
“I think he is the man to lead the country, get us through this troubled time, as he has done before and ultimately lead the Conservative Party to victory at the next election,” he told LBC.
Meanwhile, Tory Mp Dame Maria, told BBC Breakfast that Boris Johnson must be thinking about whether it is “appropriate” for him to enter the leadership contest as he still faces a parliamentary inquiry into the Partygate scandal, Tory MP Dame Maria Miller has said.
She told BBC Breakfast: “I certainly think that Boris Johnson would be thinking very long and hard as to whether it would be appropriate to put himself forward to lead our country at a time where … he is still subject to a very serious privileges committee investigation which could ultimately lead to him having to resign.
“ … I am sure he, who has put our country first in his life even when he was sick and in hospital during the pandemic would not want to jeopardise the stability of our country, again that is why I am supporting Penny Mordaunt because I think she brings that stability.
“She can reach out to people who really need to have knowledge that they have got somebody in 10 Downing Street who really understands the struggles or ordinary people in this country.”
Meanwhile, the editor of the ConservativeHome website warned that the Tory party “is becoming a joke” at home and abroad, as he claimed Boris Johnson was “leading the procession” towards “an open grave”.
“The thought occurs that maybe the Conservative Party no longer cares,” Paul Goodman wrote. “Perhaps the sum of its ambition is to become the provisional wing of the right-wing entertainment industry: happy to preach to a diminishing band of true believers, and good for a newpaper column or fringe TV turn, while Keir Starmer gets on with the tiresome business of actually running the country.”
Mr Goodman, a former comment editor at The Spectator while Mr Johnson was employed there, warned that if put back in No 10, the ex-PM would staff his government “with fifth-raters” given the scope of ministerial resignations which saw him forced to resign in July.
He wrote: “The Germans have a word for it: Totentanz – a dance of death. Conservative MPs, peers, donors, hacks and activists caper [towards] an open grave, with Death himself – sorry, Johnson – leading the procession. The dance possesses them; it has a momentum of its own; they are powerless to stop.”
Opposition parties including Labour are calling for a general election so that the exasperated public can have a say in who becomes the next British prime minister.
“The truth is [that] just passing around the prime minister job, the chancellor job, like it’s some sort of game of ‘pass the parcel,’ is not going to provide the country with the leadership and the stability that we desperately need,” Sunak’s former opposite number, Labour Party shadow finance minister Rachel Reeves, told the BBC Friday.
Rushi Sunak is currently the bookies favourite to become the next prime minister, but if Boris Johnson manages to rally enough support to return as prime minister, he will have a massive task of not only reuniting his party, but of improving the economic situation in the Uk.
Restoring credibility in his party will be his most serious challenge, after partygate and a number of misdemeanours by members of his party.
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