Tories should make one more U-turn and bring back Boris
DO TORY MPs ever do anything other than plot to bring down their elected leaders? After axing Theresa May and ousting Boris Johnson, they are now out for the blood of Liz Truss following her sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor yesterday.
The latest plan is for a “dream ticket” of Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak to replace Truss unopposed. Presumably it is envisaged that Ms Mordaunt would be PM and Sunak her Chancellor. How long would that last in the face of hostile opinion polls before the plotting resumed in earnest? A week? Ten days at the outside?
While Ms Mordaunt is certainly a stronger despatch box performer than the hapless Ms Truss, she would still be wholly hamstrung by the inescapable fact that she’d be squatting on someone else’s mandate and manifesto.
That someone else is, of course, Boris Johnson. It was Boris – the best communicator and biggest star British politics has seen for many years – who won over the country to his twin objectives of levelling-up and getting Brexit done.
Then came Covid, bringing astonishing pressures and challenges for governments right across the world. Now that a little dust is settling on the pandemic, it can be seen that Johnson with Sunak as his Chancellor did pretty well.
ACCORDING to likefor-like World Health Organisation data, our fatality figures were better than the likes of Italy, Spain and even Germany. Given the relatively poor underlying health of our population that is something to be proud of. So is the fact that Britain under Johnson became the first major country to do away with lockdown legislation and learn to live with the disease.
So is the way that Johnson and Sunak avoided a plunge into mass unemployment via innovative policies such as the furlough scheme. So, indeed, is the Johnson record on the crisis that came hard on the heels of Covid – Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. And while Johnson’s poll ratings certainly plunged in the wake of lockdown parties in Downing Street, they never dropped anywhere near as low as support for Truss has already plummeted.
Neither did Sunak ever lose credibility to anything like the extent that Kwarteng had, even when it emerged that his wife was non-domiciled for tax purposes and that he had held a US “green card”. A year ago, the Tories enjoyed a 20 point lead over Labour on the key test of economic management. Now that position is reversed.
The answer to Tory woes is staring their MPs in the face. What is needed is not another revolution but a restoration: Boris back as Prime Minister and Rishi back as Chancellor to calm the financial markets.
Ah but, I hear you say, they fell out disastrously and Sunak’s resignation precipitated the downfall of Johnson. Well, yes they did and yes it did. But so what? Time away from the pressures of high office will hopefully have led each to reflect on just how brutal a hand they were dealt and how much they achieved together. And perhaps also on mistakes they made and how to avoid them in future.
If Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson could come back together after 15 years of feuding – which they did when Brown needed bolstering as PM – then why not Johnson and Sunak now? Such a move would see morale soar among grassroots Tory members and alienated Tory voters alike.
Among Tory MPs it is also to be hoped there is now a heightened appreciation of just what an advantage it is to have a great communicator at the head of the party. Unlike now.
BRINGING back Boris, with a stronger Cabinet prepared to challenge him more vigorously on his political blind spots, and a Chancellor the financial markets respect, would be the game-changer the Tories and the country desperately need.
Suddenly Keir Starmer would find his huge opinion poll lead dropping like a stone. Pretty soon he would no longer be seen as PM-in-waiting but rather as a not-quite-goodenough opposition leader set to make only marginal gains at a subsequent election.
The biggest obstacle to all this happening is wounded pride: that of Johnson, of Sunak and above all of the many Tory MPs who got into an almighty flap in the face of hostile media whipping up a storm about lockdown breaches in Whitehall.
By ditching their greatest election winner in 30 years on so flimsy a pretext they made a terrible mistake, shattering party unity in the process. It is not too late for those same Tory MPs to make a U-turn. All other roads lead to crushing defeat.
‘The answer to Conservative woes is staring their MPs in the face’