Could Boris Johnson make a comeback as Britain’s Prime Minister?

IT SEEMED at once incredible and inevitable.

No sooner had Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain announced her sudden resignation Thursday (Oct 20) afternoon than a familiar name surfaced as a candidate to succeed her: Boris Johnson, the prime minister she replaced a mere 45 days ago.

Johnson, who is vacationing in the Caribbean, has said nothing publicly about a bid for his old job. But the prospect of Boris redux has riveted Conservative Party lawmakers and Cabinet ministers – delighting some, repelling others and dominating the conversation in a way that Johnson has for his entire political career.

Nor is the idea of his return merely notional: Among those who are keeping tallies of the voting intentions of lawmakers, including some London news organizations, Johnson is only slightly behind his chief rival, Rishi Sunak. On Friday morning, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is currently the business secretary and served under Johnson, became the first Cabinet minister to endorse his former boss.

Johnson received both endorsements and criticism as the contest to succeed Truss gathered pace Friday. Penny Mordaunt, now a senior minister, became the first to publicly declare her candidacy. She is considered one of the leading contenders along with Johnson and Sunak.

The prospect of Johnson back in No. 10 Downing St. appalls many Conservatives, who argue that voters would never forgive the party for rehabilitating him after the scandals that brought him down in July, including illicit parties held during the pandemic and misconduct allegations against a lawmaker he promoted. Embracing such a polarizing figure, they say, would splinter the Tory ranks, perhaps irrevocably.

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“Only a nation which was gripped by pessimistic despair and no longer believed that there could be a serious response to its unfolding tragedies would want to take refuge in the leadership of a clown,” Rory Stewart, who ran unsuccessfully against Johnson in 2019, wrote Friday on Twitter.

And yet, as Johnson’s supporters never tire of pointing out, he delivered a landslide Conservative victory in the general election of 2019. After the calamitous tenure of Truss, in which she tried to engineer a radical economic agenda with the support of only one-third of the Tories in Parliament, some say that mandate gives him – and him alone – the capacity to restore the party’s depleted electoral fortunes.

“One person was elected by the British public with a manifesto and a mandate until January ’25,” Nadine Dorries, a former Cabinet minister who is one of Johnson’s most outspoken backers, wrote Thursday on Twitter.

Under election rules laid out by the party Thursday, candidates need 100 nominations from lawmakers to appear on the ballot next week. According to the informal tallies, neither Johnson nor Sunak is close yet, though in one spreadsheet, which includes unnamed supporters, Johnson is at 52.

Setting a threshold of 100 nominations was intended to winnow the field to a handful of candidates and keep the race brief, thus avoiding the drawn-out, divisive campaign that was won by Truss. Given that there are only 357 Conservative lawmakers, there can be, at most, three names.

There is a lively debate in political circles about whether Johnson can clear that hurdle, but with several more lawmakers coming out in his favor Friday, it no longer seems implausible. Asked who was likely to be the next prime minister, a member of the government texted in reply, “Boris?”

Andrew Gimson, who wrote a biography of Johnson, said, “I think he’s got a very good chance of coming back. He’s got real momentum.” For a demoralized party trailing in the polls, Gimson said, “It would be a much better story if Boris came back. There would be a sense of incredulity – the sheer spectacle of it.”

In contrast, Sunak’s supporters are presenting him as the safe pair of hands, the man who can restore stability following the crisis precipitated by Truss’ government when it announced unfunded tax cuts last month, sending financial markets into a tailspin. During the summer leadership contest that he lost to Truss, he gave a prophetic warning of the risks of her economic program, including the tax cuts that ended up rattling the markets.

So the appointment of Sunak, an experienced former chancellor of the Exchequer, might reassure financial markets enough to give a new government more leeway when it devises a new budget plan.

Mordaunt, who finished third in the summer leadership contest, has good communication skills and has raised her profile in recent weeks, including this week when she appeared in Parliament to defend the government. Her supporters argue that she might be the best placed of the possible contenders to manage a fractured Conservative Party.

“Penny is the best candidate to unite our party and lead our great nation,” said Bob Seely, one of her supporters and a member of Parliament.

If Johnson were to emerge from the ballot as one of two surviving candidates, the odds of his winning could rise considerably. The choice would then go to the party’s 160,000 or so members, among whom Johnson remains enduringly popular. Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor of the Exchequer in July helped set in motion Johnson’s downfall, is viewed with suspicion by many party members, even if he has solid support among the lawmakers.

That is why some political analysts expect the party’s elders to lean on the candidate with fewer votes to withdraw before that stage.

There are other significant hurdles to Johnson’s return: He is under investigation by a parliamentary committee over whether he misled the House of Commons about parties held in Downing Street that broke pandemic rules. It could recommend Johnson’s expulsion or suspension from Parliament.

For all of his charisma, it is also not clear that Johnson retains the same power to turn out voters that he did three years ago. The scandals that brought him down eroded his popularity with many Britons, and it was under his watch that the polls began to tilt heavily toward the opposition Labour Party.

Finally, there is the question of whether Johnson is actually ready to return. In his farewell speech to Parliament, he signed off with, “Hasta la vista, baby,” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous line from the movie “Terminator 2.” He later compared himself to Cincinnatus, a fifth-century Roman politician who saved the state from an invasion, retired to his farm, then subsequently returned to Rome as leader.

Still, as a highly visible former prime minister, Johnson is in line to take in millions of dollars on the after-dinner speaking circuit. He is expected to write another newspaper column, a gig that could bring him several hundred thousand pounds a year.

Johnson could also receive a lucrative advance for his memoirs, though that is complicated by the fact that he already owes the Hachette Book Group a biography of Shakespeare. Publishing executives said that if he sold the memoir to Hachette, it could allow him to set aside the Shakespeare book.

With two young children with his wife, Carrie, and several other children by his former wife, Marina, people who know Johnson say he is keen to make big money – something he cannot do as a serving prime minister, even if the job comes with housing and a comfortable salary of £164,080, or about US$182,400. NYT