Tory MPs to Boris Johnson: Thanks, But no Thanks
Conservative MPs have said they do not want Boris Johnson to return as Tory leader. The Telegraph has more.
Senior figures said there was no “appetite” among the party’s 121 MPs for the former prime minister to make a comeback, adding that he was unpopular with floating voters and the political landscape had changed.
Some are said to have threatened to quit the party if Mr Johnson were to be readmitted. It comes amid rumours that he could be considering a Donald Trump-style return to frontline politics.
The Conservatives are floundering in the polls under Kemi Badenoch. Earlier this month, YouGov put them in fourth place behind Reform UK, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Backers of Mr Johnson said he was a proven election-winner and could see off the threat of Reform because of his cross-party appeal, but current Tory MPs have said he should not return.
One said: “I don’t think there’s a lot of enthusiasm amongst this parliamentary party, particularly amongst the new MPs who obviously never served with him.”
They added that there would always be an “affection” for Mr Johnson among Tories because of his huge electoral success in 2019, but said: “I don’t think there is an appetite for him to come back, given that he is actually very unpopular with floating voters.”
A shadow Cabinet minister said that they could not think “of a single one” of their colleagues who thought Mr Johnson returning to the Conservative Party fold would be a good thing.
Iain Martin, a political columnist, told the Not Another One podcast last week that two Conservatives MPs had made it known they would “not stick around” if Mr Johnson became party leader again.
Mrs Badenoch refused to be drawn on whether the former PM should return to politics, telling GB News on Sunday: “I love Boris. He sends me lots of messages, gives me lots of advice, like Iain Duncan Smith, like David Cameron.
“I have great people who have been in this situation before, who dealt with difficult times. So it’s up to him what he wants to do.”
Allies of Mr Johnson outside Parliament, however, sought to encourage his return. One said he should be put back onto the Tory candidate list and put forward for a by-election to show he was still an “election winner”.
Another said that if the former prime minister were to fight a by-election and beat Reform, it would show he was the leadership candidate to see off the threat from Nigel Farage’s party.
But another Johnson ally said that although there was a “Boris-shaped hole” in British politics, the idea that Tory MPs would trust him enough to have him back in the party “is just too far-fetched”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Watch Laurie Wastell talk to Lord Frost on the Sceptic about why a Boris leadership bid is bound to capsize, thanks to the ‘Boriswave’.
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No thanks, Boris. Most of our present problems are due to your insincerity and broken promises.
It seems to be overlooked that Boris (thanks to his idiot wife) drove the Net Zero agenda.
“Backers of Mr Johnson said he was a proven election-winner”
“They added that there would always be an “affection” for Mr Johnson among Tories because of his huge electoral success in 2019”
Therein lies the problem with The Conservative Party. It’s been so focused on winning elections and gaining power (using tactics such as focus groups, policies “popular” with the electorate and pandering to special interest groups), that it has largely failed to put in place the challenging “small c” policies and changes that the country needs to stop the decline.
“a proven election-winner”; and a proven nation-wrecker. Covid has cast a long shadow.
In 2019 Johnson won a mandate for change, the vote was a cry from the electorate for a return to proper conservatism in the style of Maggie. Johnson not only ignored the people he actually went along with the Scamdemic and set this country on an ever quickening spiral of destruction. He was offered a Churchill moment on a plate but he not only bottled it he threw himself behind the whole globalist enterprise to the extent that he supported the lockdowns, the murder of old folk in care homes, the jabbination assaults on pregnant women and the young. A man wholly bereft of fight and fibre who was complicit in the murder of thousands, a lazy, feckless degenerate who sold this country down the river. If he dropped dead tomorrow he would have been here far too long.
Boris Johnson – a blot on the landscape to put it mildly.
100% agree. He is an irrelevance now, as is his party. His party and their supporters and papers like the Telegraph still seem to be in denial.
One can only hope that, should Reform win enough seats to form a workable administration, that they are just about acceptable – I think that’s all we can hope for. But it would be a start.
Thanks tof. I agree.
People fail to understand that the lying Oaf is a metropolitan liberal who actually was pro-EU until he saw a chance to change sides and become the figurehead of an awful but ultimately successful leave campaign. He then expected to step up when Call Me Dave slunk off having lost his referendum gamble but May got the job first.
The Conservatives are just like the Democrats, they don’t get it. The problem isn’t their leader, it’s them – their policies and the destruction they caused when in Office.
I won’t matter who leads them, they are toast.
Don’t believe it is Kemi Badenoch that is to blame for Tories failing – that responsibility lies entirely with the Johnson and Sunak lot.
The truth is that the rot set in with the Con party when Heseltine did for Margaret Thatcher. Every single PM since Maggie has been wholly signed up to the agenda of the Davos Deviants which basically is all about destroying Great Britain. The Con party Must die as a prerequisite to regaining our country. Without this this country cannot be turned around and if we cannot start a turnaround then Britain will disappear – sink beneath the proverbial waves.
He will be back whether they like it or not. He is the natural spiritual leader of the country. People see him as cocking a snook at the establishment and sharing their relish for dirty jokes and underhand tactics. I don’t follow English politics very closely but I would think that he is much more appealing than Farage.
He is an ignorant lying oaf who was never suitable to be Prime Minister and it shamed this country that he ever held the office. He does not do detail – not unlike Farage – so brings nothing except the inability to use a comb and play the buffoon.
I had high hopes of BJ when he was elected, mostly fuelled by his libertarian articles in the Telegraph and Spectator. Here was a person who, if he put his thoughts into actions, would improve our lot. Along came Covid and he proved to be an expensive disaster, depriving us of liberty and costing £450bn. An absolute waste of space. Never again.
Not to mention the Boris wave and nut stupid zero.
So, an unmitigated disaster.
But like you at the start I had high hopes, later shattered.
I never even had any hopes of Boris, and he didn’t fail to disappoint. He always was a lightweight, a clown, an unreliable, malingering, over-promoted book salesman with a silver tongue in a mouth full of…..
The many ridiculous achievements of the present generation of Brits must include electing him, believing that Covid lockdowns and Net Zero were real issues, and then rushing into the arms of an immature pervy gay Marxist robot. Next thing they’ll believe is that KC3 is a nice, benevolent fellow…..
It might drive a good few of the sounder tory mps to jump ship to reform, but would probably also guarantee a split vote in the next election so there’s pros and cons.
Sad situation. On an international level foreign experts find it hard to understand just how quickly this country has fallen. It requires a long explanation. It is just depressing to even look at such a demoralised population. Less and less to live on. I was in a chemist shop today and I was talking to the man in front of me and he was telling me that he has £1.50 a day to spend on food and initially I was shocked. But when you look at the numbers this is typical of most of the population.
I can lay out to you why you find him so attractive. In the 1990s there was a satirical tv show called Have I Got News For You? He was a regular guest and if you look at his utterances they were essentially little traps to get the plebs on board. He is seen as a Byronic hero, as Steerforth. This is not the case at all. He represents the most regressive element of Anglo-American fascism. That strain wil use hook or crook to stay alive.
We all created this evil. I hope that the British can see their contribution and use their natural poetic genius to remove it forever. What will expiate the curse on the land? There is so much that went wrong but just acknowledgment.. If you don’t then I can tell you clearly that the wages of sin is death.If you are living in Britain now it is a twilight existence that is to say that there is no feeling of careless abandon. Careless abandon is the freedom of the spirit.
This guy really isn’t your saviour. I know he is funny and I know that he appears to you like a genius but this is just for messed up psychological reasons. Yes you will be rudderless and leaderless for a while but you really need to shake off your addiction to this character.
The blond inseminator? No thanks!
It would be a disaster for the Conservatives to put him back in parliament, let alone make him leader.
But as their candidate for Mayor of London, I reckon he would give Khan a serious run for his money.