The Conservative Party is not an imaginative organisation. The clue is in the name. In response to an electoral disaster – like last week’s local election Götterdämmerung – its established method is to work through three familiar stages: pretend, Comical Ali-style, that everything is fine; begin plotting to oust the leader; and then smash the glass marked ‘bring back Boris Johnson’.
Having ticked off one and two, yesterday saw the unhappy launch of stage three. Politico have suggested a growing number of Tories, including MPs, are pining for the party’s ex-leader-but-two. No MP has gone public with a call to ‘Bring Back Boris’ quite yet. But there is an awareness that recapturing the spirit of the 2019 victory – and the Red Wall voters that entailed – is the only way to fend off the existential challenge of Reform UK. Such an argument has been boosterd by new polling from More in Common.
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