Boris Johnson comeback would be popular with voters – but he wouldn’t be a better PM second time around
IS Boris Johnson plotting a comeback?
Is the Pope a Catholic?
The old rogue has been engineering his second coming since the moment he waved “Hasta la vista” on his final day as PM.
The Tories have inflicted FIVE Prime Ministers on us in 12 years, why not one more, even if he is a re-tread?
A resurgent BoJo, the world’s greatest vote magnet, might even lead his party to a sen-sational fifth-term victory against stultifying plodder Sir Keir Starmer.
He would certainly neuter the real threat of incursion in Red Wall seats by Nigel Farage’s Reform Party.
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And he would inject new life into the Tory party at large, who still back their hero and bitterly resent the way he was cut down after delivering Brexit against all the odds.
There is no doubt BoJo MkII is a political phenomenon who would give drearily lacklustre Labour a run for its money.
But would he make a better PM second time round?
Boris Johnson wasn’t kicked out of Downing Street because of Partygate or a host of other scandals.
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He was dumped because he gave his enemies a fistful of weapons and left his allies empty-handed.
His closest political pals still wince at his limp leadership and broken promises on such crucial Tory issues as mass immigration, penal green levies, the Northern Ireland protocol and economic reform.
Partygate and the inexcusable Owen Paterson lobbying fiasco merely reinforced the image of a dodgy Government wallowing and adrift.
Even his Covid vaccine triumph was tarnished as the catastrophic social and economic cost of lockdown began to surface.
Rickety finances
It took Liz Truss’s explosive “Black Hole” premiership to blast open a long-overdue debate on economic growth, sky-high taxes and the cloying embrace of the Whitehall Blob.
Which brings us to Rishi Sunak, ex-Chancellor and the current holder of the Tory musical chair.
I like Rishi.
Most people do.
He seems that rarest of creatures — an honest politician.
American cynics say: “If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.”
But I think Rishi is genuine.
He is a Thatcherite Brexiteer who understands how economics and markets work.
Given time, he will bring our rickety national finances back under control.
But voters are in a hurry.
This is the age of instant gratification.
Polls show hardly anybody under 40 votes Tory.
This is the cohort who could decide the 2024 election, a generation quite different to any other in history.
Their “lived experience” does not include pre-2008 Britain, the age before uncontrolled mass immigration.
They don’t recall a time before mass obesity turned Brits into the fattest and unhealthiest people in Europe.
The Smartphone generation is not fazed by instantly access-ible porn, online gambling, drug-peddling.
Some have abandoned hope of ever owning a home.
Others refuse to work, ever — and if they do, it is WFH.
The woke generation has embraced divisive race, gender and climate change issues as a new religion.
Labour has identified under-40s as their kind of voters.
A Sunday Times poll suggests almost half of those over 65 (46 per cent) would vote Tory today, while barely one in seven (15 per cent) between 25 and 35 would do so.
Rishi Sunak outpolled his own party.
There was also good news for Rishi this weekend showing him streets ahead of Labour’s Keir Starmer on handling inflation, economic growth and small boats crossing the Channel.
Safer waters
These will be key issues at the next election — coupled with the political stability so disastrously lacking since the Tory split over Brexit in 2016.
Grassroots Tories will always adore the buccaneering style of Boris Johnson.
They might never forgive Rishi Sunak for — in their eyes — knifing their champion.
But he has started well, bringing a healing calm to a divided party.
Inflation is about to plunge, taking the wind out of strikers’ sails.
Some believe he will even have room for tax cuts in ’24.
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For the time being, Rishi is paddling cautiously towards safer waters.
Can he reach them before the Great Blond Shark takes him down?
THE plan to ban throwaway plastic plates, cutlery and polystyrene cups is long overdue.
But it is a flea bite in the global battle against plastic waste clogging our oceans and killing wildlife.
Cruise liners and fishing boats dump mountains of plastic clutter.
Rivers in Russia, China and India are filled with a lethal, all-pervasive industrial plastic soup.
Maybe we should launch a Just Stop Petrochemicals campaign.