Deprived of Brexit, the Tories have simply lapsed back into division

If contrition doesn’t work, try boosterism. After a head-bowed display of apparent remorse to the television cameras, the next day we saw the prime minister bouncing back to his old boisterous self at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Perhaps he was enraged by the defection of one of his own backbenchers, Christian Wakeford, or maybe he wanted to remind his followers of his sometime prowess as a parliamentary debater, but at any rate he was showing some belief in himself, which, to be fair, is not usually in short supply. He did well to stand up to some unexpectedly biting wit from Sir Keir Starmer, as well as a flat-footed assault from David Davis, while his backbenchers enjoyed hearing that plan B was being mostly abolished earlier than expected. Inflation being at a 30-year high was brushed aside as a mere footnote to the UK’s supposedly booming economy.

If acting like a winner is enough to be a winner, then Boris Johnson has little to worry about. He seems to possess unbridled confidence about the outcome of Sue Gray’s investigation. Ms Gray is reportedly “reaching out” to Dominic Cummings, despite the danger that he might nip her fingers as she does so. She will no doubt test with Mr Cummings the prime minister’s plaintive defence that “no one told” him that the party he attended was in breach of the lockdown rules. Mr Cummings says that he and others did warn the prime minister precisely about that, in advance, and states that he would swear under oath to that effect.

Who to believe? In the absence of further documentary evidence, Ms Gray, along with the Conservatives and the country as a whole, will be faced with a choice about which of them to trust: Mr Johnson or his former adviser Mr Cummings. “Neither” is a good enough answer, so far as the PM is concerned, to sow reasonable doubt about his guilt.

Mr Johnson’s best bet would seem to be to confuse the picture, throw distractions up, and delay Ms Gray’s probably ambiguous findings for as long as possible, so that the public and his MPs are so bored by Partygate that they capitulate. There may be something in that – he has few other strategies to choose from – but even if he does in the end avoid a vote of no confidence from his own MPs, his reputation is hopelessly damaged, and his authority shattered.

It will never be glad, confident morning again for the prime minister, and he will limp from scandal to crisis, and on to the next crisis, for as long as he hangs on in Downing Street. There will be catchy slogans and the usual boosterism, but little sense of the government being involved in some convincing post-Brexit project of national renewal. “Build back better” and “levelling up” will remain empty promises.

It is difficult to believe that the Conservatives, usually so keen on power, want this man to lead them into the next general election – or even the next round of local elections in May – but it may be that they are so unsure about what they want their government to do, and what they stand for, post Brexit, that they can’t decide on what they want from any new leader. Their problem is that, deprived of Brexit, they have simply lapsed back into division.

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No matter what Ms Gray or Conservative MPs say, the voters started to make their minds up about Mr Johnson long ago, and certainly before Partygate. They were appalled by sleaze, they are disappointed by the failures on the refugee crisis, they are worried about the energy crisis and the cost of living, tax hikes and hospital waiting lists, they fret about climate change, and they are unconvinced that the prime minister is capable of running the country. He hasn’t even got Brexit done.

None of these problems are suddenly going to go away, and Mr Johnson has no answers. Nor has the pandemic ended – and if Mr Johnson has to ask the British people to make sacrifices because of Covid, or some other emergency, he will now lack all moral authority to do so. In all senses, Mr Johnson simply cannot do his job.

Voters may not yet be entirely convinced by Labour and the other opposition parties (at least outside Scotland), but Sir Keir no longer frightens many of them in the way that Jeremy Corbyn did. They are now growing rather more anxious about what “the trolley”, as Mr Cummings calls Mr Johnson, has in store for them over the next few years.

Sooner or later, that lack of public respect and confidence will make itself felt, and decisively.