Don’t write Johnson off if he sticks to the agenda that put him in No 10

Worst of all by far is that Downing Street has lost a bona fide political genius in the shape of Dominic Cummings

The Reset has every chance of success, and the country every chance of bouncing back from its current depressing nadir

With what glee have commentators across the board tried to write off Boris Johnson’s “Reset” of his Government before it has even been launched. The assumption that because he has had to self-isolate he will not be able to do this is absurd, not least because we have Brexit and a reshuffle coming up.

It is said that the Conservative Party constantly oscillates between smug self-satisfaction and unwarranted terror, and it is certainly true that at present it is in the grip of the latter. There’s the doleful 50,000 figure of Covid-related deaths and the various about-turns which have dispirited those Tory MPS who have failed to grasp the new constitutional principle that if a footballer as popular as Marcus Rashford demands something, the Government must do what he says.

Worst of all by far, of course, is that Downing Street has lost a bona fide political genius in the shape of Dominic Cummings who many seem to have feared and hated but who nonetheless gave the ministry an ideological drive and impetus that it cannot afford to lose now he has gone.

Margaret Thatcher was sometimes blown off course by events, but because she had a fixed ideological star by which to guide her, she was always able to get back on course. That was true of too few of her Conservative successors, but if Boris wants to be a historically transformational prime minister of the mould of Clement Attlee, Margaret Thatcher and (for better and worse) Tony Blair, he needs to find such a steady conceptual end point by which to guide himself.

I suspect that Boris has not come so far and incurred such wrath merely to be an also-ran premier like John Major, Gordon Brown or Theresa May. The Reset, if it coincides with a clean Brexit, a smart Government reshuffle and a successful vaccine will work. It should also remind us that for the great issues facing Britain, it is the centre-Right of politics that has the big, ambitious ideas, rather than the Left.

The loss of Cummings does mean that the levelling-up agenda requires an active champion, but fortunately it has one in the redoubtable Munira Mirza, the head of the PM’S policy unit, who will not be putting up any white flags in the all-important culture war.

The Reset thus has every chance of being successful, and the country every chance of bouncing back from its current depressing nadir, as long as Boris keeps his nerve and retains his instinct to speak for those who gave him the European referendum and the 2019 general election. Nobody has won any money betting against Boris Johnson up to now, and his rebooting of his London mayoralty worked both times he tried it.

The rumour that he is considering having Baroness Finn – the intelligent, no-nonsense former Cabinet Office special adviser – as his new chief of staff ought to please Tories. Similarly, the knowledge that after Brexit, the tough reforming flair of Michael Gove can be redeployed in one of the great offices of state should electrify the Reset when it comes.

One can understand why journalists might hate Boris – he is after all the journalist who showed that he could become Prime Minister, too – but it is incomprehensible in many MPS who would not be in the House of Commons today were it not for his long political coat-tails.

When Boris deploys what even his enemies admit is his considerable charm and forges a fine post-brexit relationship with the incoming Biden-harris administration, and trade talks restart in earnest after the transfer of power in January, the Reset will be well under way.

It is perfectly possible that when the economy rebounds – and with the stock market rising 5 per cent on news of a vaccine, imagine what’s possible once it’s deployed – and once a public inquiry is out of the way, Covid-19 and its memory will not be in the top 10 list of voters’ concerns at the time of the 2024 election. So don’t write off Boris as so many commentators seem to have; the agenda that put him into No 10 will keep him there, so long as he stays true to it.