If you’re someone who doesn’t have the time or inclination to read Nadine Dorries’s 350-page book, The Plot: The Assassination of Boris Johnson, there’s one stand-out line that will save you a lot of trouble.
In an interview for the book, it’s the former Prime Minister himself who has a succinct summary.
“The plot was always to get Rishi in, I just couldn’t see it at the time,” he tells Dorries.
Now, there isn’t actually a lot of hard evidence of how this alleged complex, decades-old conspiracy worked. There is a lot of wild, deep state style speculation, with shadowy sources given Bond villain names and nomenclatures.
It’s no secret that Dominic Cummings felt it was his “duty to get rid” of Johnson from No 10. But the key fact remains that the main reason Tory MPs finally ousted the PM was because he was his own worst enemy.
It wasn’t Cummings who was photographed raising a glass at a lockdown party for his staff, and it wasn’t Cummings who lied about it all before Parliament.
“Partygate”, plus his serial inability to deliver on his policy promises, were not an assassination, they were a political suicide, self-inflicted by Johnson’s lack of grip or seriousness in office.
But the real “plot” that is laid bare by Dorries’s book is Johnson’s attempt to plot a path back to power. His most striking remarks in his exclusive interview with his ally were these: “I’m frustrated. I’m seething. I’m a caged beast. I’m a coiled mamba…”
Those are the words of a man who clearly misses being PM and would one day like to resume the reins at No 10. And, once again, he may be playing the long game to get what he wants.
His GB News show will give him the perfect captive audience to add to his loyal Daily Mail following. Those are two media outlets carefully targeted to rebuild the coalition that got him elected: the “Red Wall” of former Labour voters and the swathe of Middle England respectively.
According to some allies, Johnson’s three-stage plan involves the Tories losing the next election, followed by the crashing-and-burning of Sunak’s replacement and then the cry of “bring back Boris” from a tired Tory party and a weary public.
In Dorries’s book, Johnson lays out his agenda for a comeback, based on a deep sense of betrayal of his plans for “levelling up”, for social care reform and other policies. He says those who voted for him in 2019 have “nothing to rally behind, nothing, we are just drifting to defeat.”
There may be method in the madness too. If Suella Braverman were to somehow become Tory leader of the Opposition, many believe she wouldn’t last long in the job. But it’s the cannier Kemi Badenoch who appears to be as much a target for Dorries, with her constant suggestions the Business Secretary is a mere puppet of Michael Gove, Johnson’s infamous betrayer.
Yet a major obstacle to any comeback is precisely the thing that led to his downfall: a public that feel he let them down. The current Covid inquiry’s revelations that the ex-PM suggested leaving old people “accepting their fate” may well have killed off for good any resurrection.
With many 2019 Tory voters having believed his pitch to be on their side, the Partygate revelations left them realising there really was one law for Johnson and another law for the ordinary public.
Just as importantly, Johnson lost the plot of his premiership because he lacked a plan. His broadbrush ideas on Brexit, on social care, on building hospitals, on ending the north-south divide, were all let down by his crippling lack of detail and of grip. His betrayal of their hopes is the real betrayal narrative that may permanently prevent his return.
Plenty of Tory MPs will roll their eyes too at Johnson’s latest outburst to Dorries, when he complains about tax in post-Brexit Britain. “Why the hell are we putting up corporation tax in this way?…Why not cut corporation tax to 10 per cent?… Why not just outbid the Irish?”
They remember it was Johnson himself who alongside Sunak agreed to jack up Corporation Tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent. Others would add that the very example of Ireland’s low tax proves that you don’t need to be outside the EU to be competitive.
Dorries’ dogged devotion to the “Big Dog” certainly seems to get under Rishi Sunak’s skin.
Only last month, Sunak joked in PMQs that “I suspect the new member for Mid Beds” – Labour’s by-election victor Alistair Strathern – “might actually support me a little bit more than the last one”. But his dislike of Dorries may pale compared to his dislike of the division Johnson is sowing.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s “joke” that he was prepared to “let the bodies pile high” in Covid (confirmed this week by his close aide Eddie Lister) may well be one more reason why the Labour seats pile high in a landslide at the next election.
Like Margaret Thatcher before him, Johnson casts a long shadow over his party because he was a winner, a deliverer of a big Commons majority.
His campaigning gifts are legendary, and he may yet hope that what he calls “the blessed sponge of amnesia” will wipe from the collective memory his previous failings. If Keir Starmer is on the ropes in Government, Johnson would relish the chance to knock the “boring bollard” out of the way.
But Johnson’s critics think that, unlike Thatcher, he puts himself first and party unity second. This Remembrance Sunday will once more see Johnson appear alongside Sunak, Liz Truss, Theresa May and David Cameron at the Cenotaph. For many, that line-up will look like a rogues’ gallery of division and disaster.
Back in the 1970s, former Tory deputy Prime Minister Willie Whitelaw accused Labour’s Harold Wilson of “going round and round the country stirring up apathy”. That’s exactly what Johnson seems to be doing to his most loyal followers, inciting them to stay at home in protest at Sunak’s own record of failure.
His current criticisms of the PM are sure to further depress the already depressed Tory Red Wall vote. And it may mean that his party is out of office for not just five years, but ten.
That may be too long a game to play, even for Conservative party members. Having long been his own worst enemy, Boris Johnson may now be his party’s too.
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