James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is it all over for Boris?

His leadership campaign is foundering while Osborne surges ahead

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[/audioplayer]Five months ago, allies of Boris Johnson were ready to launch his bid to become leader of the Conservative party. The election was imminent and even David Cameron was fretting that the Tories were going to lose. A sympathetic pollster had prepared the numbers that made the post-defeat case for Boris: he extended the Tories’ reach, and a party that had failed to gain a majority for 23 years desperately needed a greater reach. There was a policy agenda ready to magnify this appeal, too: compassionate conservatism, based around adopting the Living Wage. Boris had kept a plausible distance from these preparations. But one of those charged by No. 10 with sniffing out plots against the Prime Minister says of the Boris operation, ‘Everything was geared to make it happen. Anything short of just shy of a majority, and it would have been in play.’

It was not to be. To everyone’s amazement, Cameron won an overall majority. When the Prime Minister arrives at the Tory conference in Manchester this weekend he will be master of all he surveys. The party has adopted an official slogan: ‘stability, security and opportunity’. But for Cameron, one word will suffice: ‘vindication’. His extraordinary election victory, to his mind, justifies everything from his decision to modernise the Tories to his going into coalition with the Liberal Democrats. His dream — being the first Tory leader since Baldwin to quit of his own volition — has never been closer to reality.

The Labour party conference was a reminder that the Tories now look set for ten more years in power, not just five, and plans are being made on that basis. Mr Cameron has chosen a date for his departure: his closest allies in Downing Street have been told that he intends to announce he’s leaving in the spring of 2019.

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