Focus on the small print when booking ex-PM

The “Red Wall”, so dramatically demolished in the post-Brexit rout of 2019, has been rebuilt with greater speed than most British infrastructure projects would ever manage.

Take the latest snapshot of polling intentions in 40 seats won by the Government from Labour then, or in a subsequent by-election, and the results are marginally worse for the Tories than the national picture.

Redfield and Wilton Strategies, which have monitored this rating, currently report a 24-point Labour lead – a few points ahead of the general 20 per cent gap. The mood across the seats captured on the wave of Boris Johnson enthusiasm is grim, symbolised in the departure of Lee Anderson’s stomp-off to the Reform party in Ashfield. So, one obvious solution would be to bring back the tousled-haired dude who captured the northern political fiefdoms for a party that had long struggled in those areas.

There are, however, a couple of reasons why this is a dicey calculation. Johnson is more tainted stardust than he was: the infectious ebullience has turned to a form of petulance.

As always with “Boris is back” stories, it is worth asking “back to what exactly?” Many of the friends briefing that Johnson has graciously agreed to step back into the ring are suspiciously close to the same group who have never accepted Sunak and would like one last heave to oust him. I doubt that Johnson shares this view. But it does mean that there is an air of self-interest about any rumoured return to the fray.

If indeed he does put aside long antipathy to Sunak and leaves the soft furnishings of his Oxfordshire retreat to rattle round the seats of the North East and Midlands, there are two reasons for doing so.

The first is that, as remarked of the ebullient attention seeker of a US president Theodore Roosevelt in the

Venezuelan President Maduro recently hosted Boris Johnson for talks, it has been reported early 20th century, Johnson is inevitably the “bride at every wedding and corpse at every funeral”. In other words, if there is to be a national event, he would rather be in it than on the sidelines. The ill-judged trip to meet President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela is also a warning, however, that Johnson is ultimately prone to doing what he wants and shaking off criticism as pettifogging. So any involvement with the campaign to prevent Labour sweeping to office would have to accept that Boris comes along as a freelancer

Whether Boris back on the march is a net positive for Sunak is questionable

– not part of a core team. The other key reason for entertaining this thought is that I have never ruled out Johnson contemplating a return as an MP to facilitate another tilt at the leadership in a post-defeat scenario. He is not the only former leader (see also David Cameron) who finds the speech circuit/newspaper column existence a less than adrenalinfuelled existence after the thrills and spills of raw politics.

Whether Boris back on the march is a net positive for Sunak’s last-ditch recovery plan is questionable. The 2019 version of Boris and the 2024 versions are different, and Red Wall voters can see the gaps. There was never really a northern euphoria about Brexit, so much as a resentment that southern Remainers should think it OK to try to undo the vote. The second referendum push probably did more to power northern voters towards the Tories than talk of the Northern Powerhouse.

When I travel to my home county of Durham, the sense is simply that a tide has gone out on the hopes of a major revival. “Turkey for Christmas” texts one when I ask about the mood. And if Boris was essentially a protest vote, it is easy enough to swing the protest the other way and return to Labour, assuming that the Reform bandwagon is a more limited prospectus (which I think it is).

Personal stories and perceptions have altered too. Johnson has never accepted that the Covid inquiry, which shone an unflattering spotlight on Number 10’s workings under his reign, was more than a put-up job by existing critics. He has never accepted blame even where it was certainly due – in the raucous, thoughtless culture that allowed lockdown drinks parties to prosper, while others accepted grave restrictions on family mixing. That rankles, no less so in the northern Tory areas as in the south.

Even assuming that Johnson could apply scapegrace talent to offset this, what message would a bouncing Boris be sending to the stump? Sunak can deploy Lord Cameron in the Home Counties and Lib Dem target seats, secure in the view that the man he brought back to Cabinet has message discipline. It is impossible to get Cameron to repeat his criticism of HS2, for instance (and I know, having tried hard in interviewing him).

Johnson is not a character to accept omertà. Appearances would inevitably turn into the Boris roadshow, rather than an enthusiastic Rishi support band.

So should the Tories bring back Boris, they might also factor in that in this contract, the small print will always end up looming large.

Anne McElvoy is host of the ‘Power Play’ podcast for ‘Politico’