Don’t bring Boris Johnson back if you want to win the next election, Tories warned in new poll

The Conservative Party’s prospects at the next general election would be considerably more dire were Boris Johnson to return to the helm, new polling suggests.

Dealing a further blow to allies still plotting his comeback, Redfield & Wilton Strategies found that just 19 per cent of voters would be more willing to vote for the Tories if the ex-prime minister was to return – versus 44 per cent who would be less likely.

Even in spite of the turmoil which marked his successor Liz Truss’s shortlived premiership, those who believed Tory MPs were right to bring his government crashing down last July still outnumbered voters who viewed his exit from Downing Street as a mistake.

While this was the case even on the day after Ms Truss’s resignation, the percentage of those who feel the Conservatives were right to depose Mr Johnson has since risen 7 points to 54 per cent, the new polling for Politico found.

In a boost to his ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak’s authority in No 10, the polling revealed a dramatic reversal in voters’ belief as to how the state of Britain would compare were his predecessor still in charge.

Thirty-five per cent said the UK would be worse if Mr Johnson had remained in office – up from 21 per cent immediately after Ms Truss resigned. Conversely, just 22 per cent think the country would be better under Mr Johnson’s government, marking a huge fall from 39 per cent on 21 October.

Despite Labour’s vast lead in the polls, Mr Sunak will also be buoyed by Redfield’s findings that 60 per cent of the public feel they are familiar with the PM and what he stands for.

Posing questions for the Labour leader as he strives to portray himself as prime minister-in-waiting, just 40 per cent of respondents said they felt that way about Sir Keir Starmer.

A number of Conservative MPs have already expressed a belief that any hopes still harboured by Mr Johnson for a comeback are already dead in the water, in remarks to The Independent in recent days.

Such declarations were sparked by separate newspaper reports – the first carrying claims that Mr Johnson had joked a No 10 leaving do was “the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now”. One Tory MP called the allegation “the final nail in his self-created comeback coffin”.

A week later, fresh claims that Mr Johnson had secured an £800,000 line of credit while in Downing Street, backed by a millionaire relative who had been suggested for a top role at a quango, saw another MP remark: “It should help kill off any chance he has of coming back.”

It came a day after Sir James Duddridge, who shot to fame when Mr Johnson texted him during the last leadership contest to say “I’m flying back, Dudders, we are going to do this,” told The Independent there was “no plot” – but said that work is going on behind the scenes to keep “the flame alive”.

Writing for The Independent on Thursday, former Brexit minister David Davis warned his colleagues sustaining a “continual drumbeat” for the ex-PM’s return that such an outcome risked a 1997-style landslide election defeat for their party.