If Boris Johnson is hoping that the current crises will blow over, he’s out of luck

Like a toddler who’s been told Santa is bringing them a Peppa Pig playset, Boris Johnson can’t wait for Christmas. Obviously he will be looking forward to being in the bosom of friends and family, his new daughter on his lap, his “buyer’s remorse” dissolved by love and members of his families cradled together in one of the fine homes that go with the job. But mostly, he’ll be relishing some informal paternal leave because he will – for a time – escape his problems.

For a man who has spent most of his life trying to evade his enemies, the festive season offers the hope that tempers will cool and crises will blow over. They won’t.

As a strategy, it is all he has got, which is not a great comfort to him or his party. Indeed, he should count himself fortunate if he makes it to the new year without being forced to tender his resignation. Usually he can’t get past lunchtime without some fresh scandal enveloping his premiership.

The next week, for example, holds the prospect of yet more unhappy episodes. The position of his director of communications, Jack Doyle, is surely untenable, even though the prime minister has expressed his “full confidence” in Mr Doyle.

We are told that he was something like a master of ceremonies at the-party-that-never-was in Downing Street last December, the “gathering” that he told lobby journalists may or may not have happened. It is bizarre, to put it mildly, and his position is obviously untenable. If Allegra Stratton had to resign, then so ought Mr Doyle.

Ms Stratton wasn’t even at the party but merely tried to defend the indefensible at a mock press conference; it sounds as if the lockdown-busting “gathering”, a sort of parody of the Oscars for the government’s team of brave spin doctors, certainly involved Mr Doyle.

Mr Johnson hopes that any questions about Mr Doyle and the infamous party (and other parties) can now be stonewalled with the line that the events are the subject of an investigation by the cabinet secretary. However, the plain fact is that Mr Doyle, the subject of deserved ridicule, cannot do his job, is unlikely ever to recover his credibility, and is now himself the story – the death knell for so many of his predecessors.

On Tuesday, the prime minister also faces a large rebellion against his Covid measures, the unhappily named “plan B”. Upwards of 50 of his backbenchers are set to defy the whip. They will be emboldened in their protest by safety in numbers, and the knowledge that the vote will be carried easily with Labour support.

Some of the Covid-sceptics may be joined by others simply looking for an opportunity to register their despair at the prime minister’s performance more generally. There is discontent about tax hikes, about refugees in the English Channel, HS2, lack of “levelling up”, Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol, and of course the Owen Paterson fiasco. Many of his erstwhile supporters regard him now as a incompetent disappointment at best and an incompetent socialist at worst.

Even more threatening will be another revolt by the voters, due on Thursday. The 10 per cent or so swing to Labour in Bexley, enough to win a general election, may well be followed up by a 20 per cent plus switch to the Liberal Democrats in North Shropshire. It is perfectly possible that the Conservatives will lose the seat, something of an earthquake, and one that adds to the Lib Dem gain in Chesham and Amersham in June.

The national opinion polls confirm the impression of a modest Labour recovery, and the front bench is as strong as it has been since the days of Tony Blair. Mr Johnson’s personal ratings have collapsed. His fans maintain that, like the old Heineken ad, Mr Johnson can refresh the red wall voters others cannot reach.

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The question then arises as to whether Mr Johnson is any longer an electoral asset. By-elections and polls cast doubt on that, but it is also not obvious that his immediate rivals would either be popular with the Tory grassroots or the national electorate. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have been running shadow leadership campaigns for some time, in rather the way Mr Johnson used to when Theresa May plunged into terminal decline. Both have kept their distance from the toxic waste dump that is No 10.

Teams are being assembled, soundings taken, dinners enjoyed. Perhaps the likes of Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Michael Gove will revive their leadership ambitions (though probably not Matt Hancock and Dominic Raab). None of that will stabilise the government.

Of course, the precise same problems that Mr Johnson has tried and failed to solve will face them – intractable problems such as omicron, the unfinished business of Brexit, levelling up, the refugee crisis and so on.

Any of the usual leadership suspects would be more businesslike and organised than Mr Johnson (though correspondingly duller and without the same way with words), and they’d break the law rather less often. However, there’s no reason to suppose they have magical answers as yet undiscovered by Mr Johnson and his advisers. Even with Mr Johnson gone, the Conservatives will remain in trouble.