The Partygate and pandemic inquiries could end his political career. But his band of dedicated supporters hope he can still return as leader to save the Tories
the newspaper group’s editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, for a peerage – would give him an even bigger, better-paid public platform. But it seems he can’t quite let go. Privately he’s said to be feeling angry and betrayed over what he sees as his premature exit. “He just isn’t used to being rejected,” says a former staffer, who thinks he’s struggling to process all that has happened during the pandemic. “There’s a kind of madness in it, like he’s in denial.
Over recent weeks his supporters have mounted an unprecedented campaign to discredit the cross-party privileges committee’s inquiry into, dismissing their investigation as rigged and crying foul over revelations that Sue Gray – the civil servant who originally conducted a Whitehall inquiry into lockdown partying – has been offered a job by Keir Starmer. They’ll argue, even if Johnson is found guilty, that the verdict somehow doesn’t count.
The then PM and his chancellor Rishi Sunak, October 2021. According to George Osborne, Johnson ‘wants to bring down Rishi Sunak and he will use any instrument to do it’.viewer who runs her own business in the north-west and feels Johnson was “hounded out” by the media. She thinks he was “far too soft” on people crossing the Channel in small boats and unlike Will considers there was “too much green agenda” in his government.
Harriet, Linda and Will all belong to the Conservative Democrats, an online group with about 13,000 followers originally created to support Johnson’s expected entry in last autumn’s leadership contest. It lives on as a place to exchange news and views that are pro-Boris and often hostile to Sunak . Two-thirds of voters don’t want him back, according to the pollsters Savanta ComRes. Eight in 10 now think he lied about lockdown parties, according to YouGov. And crucially, Rishi Sunak now leads Boris Johnson by 20 points among so-called “red wall” voters on who would make the best prime minister, according to an eve-of-budget poll by JL Partners.
Unveiling his Northern Ireland protocol deal to parliament last month, Sunak politely thanked the predecessors he described as having “laid the groundwork” for it. The house promptly erupted in laughter.during her short time in office, crediting Johnson with helping land a deal he has publicly attacked was arguably pushing it. But Sunak, not confrontational by nature, has deliberately sought to avoid all-out war with his predecessor.
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