Explainer: Will Team Boris ever leave Rishi alone?
Imagine you’ve finally made it to the top. For years you’ve been in second position, waiting for the right time, and now there you are: you’ve stolen the top seat and finally got rid of your blonde-haired, chaotic predecessor. He’s out of your way, and you can finally relax and focus on the things you’re really interested in – AI, growing the economy and expanding your 12-metre swimming pool for the summer. You smile to yourself, a little happier.
Until you open the Daily Mail this morning only to find out your opponent has found the most vexing way of getting back at you: a weekly column at the tabloid. Poor Rishi. Indeed it was clear to everyone today that the mysterious “erudite new columnist” touted on the first page of the Mail will be none other than Boris Johnson.
After his previous jobs at The Telegraph and The Spectator, many expected Johnson to come back to journalism after his career in politics ended abruptly last week. It’s not that surprising he’s chosen the Mail as a new home, given the paper’s political lineage. Nevertheless, it’s quite funny to imagine Rishi’s aides having to pour over every word of Johnson’s column every week to find sneaky attack lines that could be stolen by Keir Starmer at PMQs.
Revenge seems to be the buzzword for Team Boris – they won’t leave Westminster without making a fair amount of noise. His number one pal, Nadine Dorries, has found her own way to exasperate Sunak by announcing she’d resign last Friday, and then refusing to resign. She’s been half an MP for a week now. Dorries will resign only when her “investigation” into why she didn’t get a peerage will be completed.
Really, she’s probably just trying to put Sunak in a difficult position by letting her seat hang until late summer, when the party already has to face two difficult by-elections in mid-July.
On Monday, MPs will have to vote on the damning report accusing Johnson of misleading Parliament – and the committees, and leaking parts of the report, and undermining the “democratic process of Parliament”. Johnson will have to say goodbye to his parliamentary pass, most likely.
“Inevitably Boris will lose the vote because you have the whole of the opposition against him, but you also have the Boris haters in the Conservative party,” Jacob Rees-Mogg, another hard-core Johnson supporter, told Sky News.
Yet he won’t let go. His weekly column for the Mail is not only a probably very lucrative occupation; it’s also a signal for Rishi’s government. “I’m still here”, Boris is saying, smiling even a little happier than Sunak.