No more feuds or vendettas. Boris and Rishi MUST unite

HAS there ever been such a politician as Boris Johnson? Ejected from Downing Street for misdeeds which now seem distant and trivial, he neither wept nor complained nor sulked, but joked.

His final words to the House of Commons were Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mocking farewell from The Terminator: ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’

In more exalted moments, he likes to compare himself to the great Roman statesman Cincinnatus, who retired to his farm and his plough, before being called back to save his country in time of need.

It is presumably the noble example of Cincinnatus, rather than the behaviour of the Terminator, which is guiding his actions now.

We have had quite enough laying waste, revenge and mayhem. What is necessary is reconciliation, unity in action for the public good and an end to quarrels. We need a new beginning, not more terminations.

While British politics holds its breath and waits for momentous events today and tomorrow, it is worth considering the merits of the two major figures now emerging in what all must hope will be a swift healing and reunification of the Conservative Party.

The turmoil of the past few months has been a huge education for us all, but mostly for those at its heart.

Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson were once a highly effective team. For the good of their party, their country and each other, could they be such a team again?

The Mail on Sunday’s striking poll today shows that Boris Johnson, even after his party’s disasters and mishaps of the past few weeks, still possesses an immense political pulling power which no other figure can match.

But while Mr Johnson appeals to a wider public than the Tories can usually reach, Rishi Sunak, too, offers reassurance to a rather different constituency – the money markets which so very much want a return to stability and predictability.

Of course there are great difficulties in any sort of reconciliation, or in an agreement to share power between these two very big beasts.

Rishi Sunak’s role in bringing down Boris Johnson has not been forgotten, though this does not mean that it cannot be forgiven. Mr Johnson’s great hero, Winston Churchill, was a fervent advocate of what he called magnanimity, which literally means greatmindedness, a generosity of spirit which overcomes petty resentments for a higher purpose.

Mr Sunak, still only 42, has time to spare. Mr Johnson – who must in any case be increasingly tempted by the leisure and the riches available to former Premiers – does not.

The continuing threat of censure by the Commons Privileges Committee, absurd as it is, also hangs over any prospect of a Johnson restoration. Yet where there is a will, there is sometimes, but not always, a way.

Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson, and their fellow MPs, must surely by now understand that an exasperated public do not wish to see any more division, squabbling or selfishness among their leaders. They elected them to govern, and they expect them to do so.

The only workable hope is unity between rivals, unity among their competing groups of followers, unity in pursuing the policies which will benefit the nation and protect it in these uncertain and worrying times.

For this to happen, everyone involved must ignore the temptations of self-indulgence, cheap vengeance, rivalry for its own sake, and pettiness in general.

They have been taught no end of a lesson by the Liz Truss episode, and by the stern verdict of the polls.

But such polls can be reversed, given time and will, and by the sort of grown-up, no-nonsense government which the Conservative Party exists to provide.