‘More kids than he has allies’: Boris’s hooliganism is history, but Rishi’s cowardly no-show was an own goal

Seven. Just seven last-ditch supporters of Boris Johnson, The Not-So-Magnificent Seven saddled up and went into the parliamentary lobbies to support their lost leader and vote against the privileges committee’s report into his lying to parliament. Seven. Johnson’s got more kids than that. It’s a miserable footnote to the career of a man who, for a while, bestrode British politics like a colossus, or at least a great big squatting toad.

They were not even his most high-profile fans. We might just recognise the names of Bill Cash, Euro mega bore, and the elegantly tailored Desmond Swayne, a lookalike of Captain White (from the Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons children’s television puppet show); but the rest of the die-hards were obscure: Joy Morrissey, Nick Fletcher, Karl McCartney, Adam Holloway and Heather Wheeler. With all due respect, these seven dwarves were all that is left of Johnson’s once-mighty army, the phalanx of 365 seats and a majority of more than 80 he won in the Christmas election of 2019.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg turned up to make a sort of Oxford Union Society contribution to the proceedings, misjudging the solemn, even sad mood of the House, and making a series of ever more abstruse debating points. He aimed a pop at Harriet Harman, but she revealed that she’d offered to stand down as chair of the privileges committee, and had been told by the government chief whip to keep going. “I think that’s a mic drop, Jacob,” she declared as the Moggster slumped back and glared, his studied languid demeanour dispelled for a moment. Never was this haunted Victorian pencil a less welcome spectral parliamentary presence.

Nadine Dorries, high priestess of the Cult of Johnson, a woman seemingly so in love with the guy that she’d give her life for him, or at least the constituency of Mid Beds, didn’t even show her face in the Commons. It would have been a spectacle to hear her unbridled scorn aimed at the treacherous Sunak and the rest of the traitors, but she has better things to do. So did Dame Priti Patel, recently honoured by Johnson. Another, Brendan Clarke-Smith went to watch the cricket, later returning to London to see Johnson trousering another few grand for a speech. James Duddridge? Awol.

The Johnsonites who abstained weren’t ungrateful or disloyal for abstaining in the historic vote but were in fact doing Johnson’s bidding. Despite the earlier spin, he didn’t want a rebellion because he knew it would go badly if he tried – more than the eventual seven kamikaze pilots, but not much more. So he was urging abstention, if only to make the best of the substantial number of MPs of all parties who’d not vote for various unrelated reasons. When, a few days ago, it became apparent that the promised rebellion to rescue Johnson was doomed for lack of support, Johnson called it off rather than be humiliated by proxy.

He was wise to do so. Recent Commons votes on the Windsor Framework and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which were effectively proxy indicators for the Bring Back Boris campaign, showed up the weakness in his parliamentary base – a few dozen at best. The ERG, a once-powerful battalion that effectively destroyed Theresa May and constituted a praetorian guard for Johnson, is splintered. Few MPs have a good word to say about their former leader.

The evening might have been even more momentous had the prime minister voted for the privileges committee report, as he surely wished to. Such reports are supposed to be accepted unanimously anyway. The whole reason Sunak resigned as chancellor last year and set in train the downfall of Johnson was because of all the ceaseless lying. Sunak couldn't take it any longer. Yet it was the last thing Rishi Sunak wanted to talk about. When he was cornered by reporters before the vote he said it was a matter for the Commons, as if it that was somehow separate from him.

But he is an MP, albeit one with an obvious special status. He should have followed his conscience and convention, shown some leadership and voted against Johnson, and his colleagues would have followed. That would have finally ended Johnson's troublemaking for the rest of this parliament, if not forever. Sunak didn’t take the opportunity, as if scared of the consequences. That was a mistake. Had he done so, he would finally have stamped his authority on the government and the party, without which the next election is unwinnable. Still, eight members of the cabinet voted for the report and against Johnson, and 118 Tories plucked up the courage to defy the deluded extremist activists in their local associations and backed the committee.

But those deluded extremist activists matter. Many remain hopelessly devoted to Johnson, and nostalgic for the victories in 2016 and 2019. They see him, despite all evidence to the contrary, as a vote-winning talisman, whose mere presence would win back the red wall, rebuild the extraordinary coalition of 2019 and reverse Labour's 15-point lead. Even if Johnson hadn't been caught lying, though, the fact is the electoral force he built was bound to collapse under the weight of the failure of Brexit to deliver better lives for the people he promised and wilfully betrayed. Johnson won in 2016 and 2019 on a false prospectus, and a pack of lies just as serious as the ones that parliament eventually punished him for.

His fan club in the party may well want him in No 10, but the MPs who know him best certainly do not and, more important, nor does the country. He ain't coming back from this. Cincinnatus can carry on ploughing his lonely furrow for a while longer.