Desperate times: is Boris about to make a comeback and could he save the Conservatives?

Telegraph

09-05-2025

If Boris Johnson wasn't pondering a political return, he wouldn't have given an interview to GB News this week – in the aftermath of the Conservatives' worst-ever local elections. ' I'm not convinced I'm in a position to do that at the moment,' he said, when questioned about a potential comeback. The door was very deliberately left ajar.
First things first: the Tories have got through five leaders in roughly 10 years – of whom Johnson himself was one – and there's no reason to believe that the removal of Kemi Badenoch would solve the Conservatives' problems. The Tory ship is losing planks and leaking water. Another mutiny on deck would risk it going down altogether.
But it's hard to keep your head while those about you are losing theirs – and blaming it on the leader. This year saw 23 council areas in England go to the polls. Next year, 150 or more may vote. Scottish parliamentary and Welsh assembly elections will also take place. Badenoch thus faces a mini general-election. Her leadership may not survive it. Or even last until then.
And according to Luke Tryl, one of the most sober pollsters in the business, 'to a surprising degree across our focus groups in recent weeks the one Tory – particularly those leaning Reform – spoken of with any affection was Johnson… the difference between Boris and other Tories is, for whatever reason, he passes that connection/relatability/not a typical Tory test.'
This presumably explains the recent survey by More in Common, of which Tryl is executive director, which found that the Conservatives would overturn an eight-point Reform poll lead and take a three-point lead themselves were Johnson to lead them again. The replacement of Badenoch by Robert Jenrick would, according to this survey, make no difference to the Tory position.
Now polls tell many different tales, but Johnson's appeal may indeed not be exhausted – at least among the striving, provincial, just-about-managing voters who backed Brexit, voted Conservative in 2019, switched to Labour last year, and last week voted in substantial numbers for Reform. The Tories need to get voters to consider them again. If Johnson can't do it, can it be done at all?
His return would also mean unfinished business. Admittedly, he wasn't compelled to leave Parliament. He chose to quit himself, before a by-election was forced on him. A Commons committee was poised to recommend a 90-day suspension from the House, which would have exceeded the 10-day threshold for triggering a recall petition and potential by-election.
You may feel that this was no more than Johnson deserved – that the committee was right to find that he deliberately misled the Commons over Covid parties in Downing Street. But was it fair that the voters never had the chance to give their view at a general election? After all, they put Johnson in, and there's a case for saying that only they were entitled to turn him out.
Whatever your view, his successors in government, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, were haunted from the start by the claim that neither had democratic legitimacy, since neither had won – or even fought – a general election before becoming Prime Minister. There would be a kind of justice in Britain's voters once again giving their view of Johnson as Tory leader at the ballot box.
So much for the past. What of the future? The practical obstacles to a Johnson return are formidable. First, he would have to be re-admitted to the Conservative candidates' list. Second, he would need to find a local association to adopt him where a by-election was pending. Third, he would have to be returned to Parliament. And then, finally, win a leadership election.
It sounds fantastical – as indeed it is. Self-preservation would suggest that Badenoch, who effectively controls the Tory candidates' list, has every reason to keep Johnson off it. By-elections are hazardous at the best of times, and this is a sticky time for the Conservatives. Above all, most of Johnson's most fervent parliamentary supporters lost their seats last year.
Furthermore, a comeback wouldn't come pain-free. A slice of Toryworld sees Johnson as a joke in the worst possible taste. There would be resignations both outside Parliament and within it – and, perhaps, defections. But if the Conservatives are desperate enough, who knows what might happen? Johnson's zany story may have further twists in it yet.
When the Tories are three-nil down and the clock is ticking, they tend to turn to their star striker on the substitutes' bench. And one can imagine, just about, Johnson turning the game round for the Conservatives. But there is much more to the matter than the Tories' own interests. Johnson might be a tonic for his party. But would he really be one for the country?
Britain isn't paying its way in the world and must face up to some home truths. Voters know in their gut that the country faces unpalatable choices. They despise politicians for not offering a lead, but are fearful of what it might mean. It is very difficult to see Johnson, with his unquenchable boosterism, knuckling soberly down to the task.
The best of governments would have been knocked off course by Covid and the Ukraine war. But Johnson's enemies have a lengthy charge sheet: net zero excess, ending no fault evictions, the Football Regulator, Covid lockdowns, a record tax burden, mass ministerial resignations. Some of this is unfair. But the critics have a point, and then some, about what happened to immigration.
The 'Boriswave' saw net migration peak at 906,000 in 2023. It is thought his government simply threw open the doors. Does he think it was a mistake? Or would some future Johnson government do the same all over again? Whatever the answer, the strongest case against a Johnson return is the simplest one: been there, done that – time to move on.
He may even draw that conclusion himself, especially if Reform continues to advance. Get ready for more Johnson interviews – more coat-trailing, more exploratory probing – if he thinks he has a crack at returning to Downing Street. But if that looks unlikely, the hard yards of leading a party to election defeat is surely not for him. For the moment, he will watch and wait.