Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Why Boris, not Rishi, will lead the Tories into the next election

(Getty images)

Some Tory MPs are hoping that Dominic Cummings’ departure from Downing Street will bring with it a vital lift to Boris Johnson’s premiership. Other Tory MPs have made up their minds about Boris already. Either they think he was always a flawed character whose only use was winning them the 2019 general election, a job long since passed; or they have been turned off by any number of things that have transpired in 2020. Basically, some Conservative MPs will be disappointed in 2021 when Boris turns out to be Boris; others are past caring.

In spite of this, it seems almost certain that Boris Johnson remains in Number 10 for the next three-and-a-half years and contests the 2024 general election as leader of the Conservative party. Boris is likely to be saved by a combination of inertia and fear of what follows him.

Why? Because even Boris’s critics admit that there is no clear-cut successor waiting in the wings. Some might point to Rishi Sunak, but there are plenty of question marks around him. His public popularity appears to rest on him being a chancellor doling out enormous sums of money in the middle of a crisis to try and save as many jobs as he can. 

That is set against Boris, who has often looked muddled and out of his depth this year, and Hancock, who has often looked way, way out of his depth during the course of the crisis. The question around Sunak’s ability to be prime minister is what happens when you take those two things away. 

How popular he will be when he has to start cutting spending, as he will have to at some point? The suggestion that public sector pay will be frozen is already causing ructions.

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