“It’s all extremely depressing, all this tearing each other apart,” says one Tory MP and former minister whose career thrived under Boris Johnson but who now holds no candle for his former boss. “Most of us just want a period of silence from him so we can get on with saving what we can before the next election. But there’s not very much chance of that happening.” This is the prevalent view among Tory MPs, many of whom backed Johnson for leader despite knowing his flaws and history of lying.
They have fallen out of love with Johnson more comprehensively than grassroots party members, having had ringside seats at the circus of his premiership. Fewer than 10 of 350 Conservative MPs came out publicly in support of Johnson on the day the privileges committee report found he had misled parliament over Partygate. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary and Johnson cheerleader, recently knighted in the ex-PM’s honours list, described it as a “vindictive” overreaction. And some allies were evenly privately threatening punitive deselection campaigns towards Tory MPs who backed Monday’s motion in favour of censuring Johnson. However, the sound and fury did not last long. Johnson, as he has done several times before, appeared to fire up outrage in his supporters before reining them back in again. There were reports that he would continue the fight against Sunak, conveying a message to his successor that Eton always beats Winchester, while his former communications director Guto Harri said Johnson would “go out in a flurry of bullets”. But by Friday, Johnson was telling his parliamentary backers to ignore Monday’s motion – a move that avoids a concrete measurement of how many MPs really would have turned out to support him. One of his closest allies, James Duddridge, predicted that there would be no vote at all as people “just wanted to move on”. Johnson also promised his “unexpurgated” thoughts in a new column for the Daily Mail, which will allow him to continue to be a thorn in Rishi Sunak’s side. But even the Friday leader column in the newspaper urged him not to destroy the party’s chances at the next election. It started with a tirade about the “kangaroo court” that wanted to give Johnson a 90-day suspension, but ended: “However aggrieved many may feel, they must look forward. There is an election to win and they are way behind in the polls. If Britain is to be spared the disaster of a Labour-led government, the Conservatives must regain a sense of unity and purpose.” Other right-of-centre media outlets were also sceptical about Johnson’s hopes for a comeback, with the Times declaring in a pointed headline “the end of the road”. Meanwhile, his former employer, the Telegraph, said nobody had come out of the affair well, suggesting that MPs would now do better to focus on the economic crisis than on internal Conservative drama. One Tory MP, Tim Loughton, said he thought Johnson would become “increasingly out of touch and irrelevant to the political scene”, while Nadine Dorries, a keen supporter of Johnson who is due to resign, provoking a byelection, told the FT that she could not see the former prime minister making a comeback. Conservative MPs, though, however angry with Johnson, are still not fully enamoured with Sunak and his failure to make much of an impact. He is now almost certain to lead the party into next year’s election, but the three impending byelections are likely to show the Tories losing ground in their home counties heartlands, the north, and Johnson’s own outer London seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. And one of the biggest battles that No 10 and Conservative party headquarters will have to fight against is a growing lack of belief among MPs and party activists that he is capable of turning things around in the polls. One senior Tory MP who will not stand again said the reason principally was “complete disillusion” with the party and the government, on top of the likelihood that he will lose his seat. Another Conservative MP, Lucy Allan, a Johnson supporter, announced on Friday that she was standing down in her Shropshire seat, and claimed that “today’s Conservative party is just not interested in seats like Telford any more.” She told the Guardian the Conservatives could have held on there if she was not standing down, but warned that it would be “nigh on impossible for a new Conservative candidate to win in Telford in 2024” with a candidate who will be “starting from scratch” and relying “entirely on a small core of Conservative vote”. “Telford is an aspirational town. People work hard and want to get on; it is small-c conservative. It wants to see hard work rewarded and better prospects for the next generation. It wants its public services to work and its trains to run on time. Get that right and people could be won over once again,” she said. No doubt the prime minister is relieved to see the back of Johnson and many of his acolytes from parliament – but an end to the Partygate-era drama means a renewed focus on his own performance. With Labour solidly ahead, and determined not to make missteps, Sunak has a job on his hands not just to deal with an impending economic crisis, but to improve morale among his battered rank and file.