The ghost of Boris Johnson will continue to haunt the Tories for a long time

Speaking about his time writing EU-bashing stories for The Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson said: “I was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door, over in England, as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power.”

Since then, Johnson has enjoyed real power, and the wheel has turned full circle: he is throwing rocks again, this time at Rishi Sunak. He might soon be back as a Telegraph columnist.

His characteristically dramatic resignation as an MP is not as surprising as it looks. Rumours have swept Westminster in recent weeks that if he learnt that the Commons privileges committee was likely to find that he had lied to parliament over Partygate, he would stand down rather than see his legacy be defined by suspension from the Commons and possibly losing in a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.

The rumour mill suggested he would make a move later to return to his former seat in Henley, where the Conservative MP John Howell is to stand down at the general election. This bit of the plan is not going to work, one senior Tory told me, because there is too much opposition to Johnson among Tory party members in Henley.

What will Johnson do now? There will be no grand plan; he acts on instinct and worries about tomorrow when it comes. In the short term, he wants to cause Rishi Sunak as much grief as possible; that means keeping alive his disciples’ hopes that he can make a spectacular return to Downing Street.

One former Johnson aide told me: “I think he will become leader of the opposition after we lose the election. He would love zapping Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions.” I doubt it; being opposition leader is a hard slog, the most difficult job in politics. I doubt Johnson has the appetite.

His au revoir – “at least for now”—was to “parliament” rather the Commons, which raises the prospect of an eventual move to the House of Lords. He would have a platform, and could continue to earn plenty of money outside parliament without having to disclose how much, as MPs must do in their register of interests.

Johnson’s latest rocks will damage Sunak. The PM looks impotent and outmanoeuvred after approving Johnson’s resignation honours list and allowing him to nominate seven lawmakers in the Lords. Sunak should have paused the already delayed list until after the privileges committee inquiry had concluded.

The prime minister, who thought he had averted the problem of the list triggering parliamentary by-elections, now has the headache of three very tricky ones: Labour has high hopes in Uxbridge, where Johnson’s majority was 7,210 in 2019. The Tories will hope to cling on in Mid Bedfordshire, where the Johnson superfan Nadine Dorries had a 24,664 majority, but tactical voting to get behind either Labour or the Liberal Democrats could ensure a humiliating Tory defeat. Today Nigel Adams, another Johnson ally, resigned in Selby, where he has a 20,137 majority over Labour.

If the Tories were to lose two or three of these contests, it would add to the sense that the party is heading for an inevitable defeat in next year’s general election, with Sunak incapable of turning the tide.

Johnson’s move is bad news for Sunak because it has destroyed the stability the PM had brought to his party. The public will see that the Tory psychodrama has not ended after all, but instead begun a new act. Voters will notice that the Tories are fighting themselves, not the very real problems facing the country.

The narrow path to general election victory mapped out by Sunak’s aides is predicated on Tory unity. But now the infighting is back. The timing is awful for Sunak. Even before Johnson’s gambit, Tory MPs were starting to lose faith in Sunak’s ability to avoid defeat in next year’s election. Labour’s 15-point lead in the opinion polls seems solid. Instead of raising the Tories’ ratings to his higher level, Sunak’s personal ratings are being dragged down by a party brand now further tarnished by Johnson.

It could have been even worse for the PM. It is significant that MPs from Johnson’s dwindling fan club are not defending him on the airwaves today. Perhaps they have more sense than Johnson himself; a comeback would require Johnson to be able to blame Sunak for the Tories losing power. A full-scale declaration of civil war would damage Johnson’s future prospects.

The former PM’s departure from the Commons will not necessarily bring Sunak much respite. The ghost will continue to haunt his successor-but-one. The media won’t stop speculating about Johnson’s next moves. Can he come back? Plenty of Tory grassroots members would welcome it. But thankfully, most Tory MPs realise he is now unpopular among voters. Even if he manages to return to the Commons – a bigger hurdle than he thinks – Tory MPs would stop him from regaining the leadership.

Johnson will continue to grab headlines whenever he chooses, distracting attention from the PM’s painstaking work to drag the Tories back into the game. Trump-like, he will continue to propagate the myth that he is a victim; a colossus brought down by pygmies led by Sunak.

It’s a delusion, but Johnson’s goodbye will be a long one. He will be throwing rocks for a good while yet.