Bring back Boris? Seriously?

If the Tories think Boris Johnson is the right answer, they are asking the wrong question

We know the mantra. Boris has charisma. He wows the voters other leaders can’t reach. He’s the one Tory who can trounce Nigel Farage.

The return of Boris Johnson would certainly give pundits like me plenty to write about. I am not so sure about his other merits. Let us take the matter in three stages: his ratings as prime minister; his reputation today; and his party’s prospects if he returns as Conservative leader.

For most of his time he was an unpopular prime minister. Until Liz Truss came along, he started off with the lowest rating of any occupant of Downing Street since the second world war, According to YouGov he went on to have a positive rating on only three brief occasions: around the time of the 2019 election and Britain’s departure from the European Union soon afterwards; when he was in hospital with Covid in April 2020; and in May 2021 when Covid restrictions were on their way out.

The rest of the time more people said he was doing badly than well; and for the last 12 months of his premiership by large amounts. Immediately before the events that triggered his resignation in July 2022, just 23 per cent thought he was doing well, while 71 per cent said badly. Not surprisingly, his reputation suffered from his “partygate” habit of ignoring his own Covid rules, and the verdict of a parliamentary committee that he “deliberately misled” MPs about what he had done. But even before that, the numbers saying “badly” outnumbered those saying “well” by more than two-to-one.

Against that, his supporters point to his 80-seat majority in the 2019 general election, the biggest Conservative victory since Margaret Thatcher’s day. He had three big advantages he would not have today. He was up against the utterly unelectable Jeremy Corbyn; Farage stood down his Brexit Party candidates in Tory target seats; and millions of voters were keen to “get Brexit done”. Next time, Corbyn wouldn’t be his rival, Farage wouldn’t be his ally, and Brexit wouldn’t be an advantage. The anti-Tory parties would remind voters of partygate and exploit his enthusiasm for a Brexit deal which most people now say has gone badly wrong.

Let’s turn now to his current reputation. YouGov finds that it is pretty bad. In February just 27 per cent had a favourable view of him; 67 per cent had an unfavourable view. That net score of minus 40 was worse than both Kemi Badenoch (minus 34) and Farage (minus 30). YouGov went on to assess his reputation in more detail:

So a fair number of voters like him, but not enough think he has what it takes to return to Downing Street. Most voters think he’s weak Big majorities say he is indecisive and incompetent. And he is overwhelmingly regarded as untrustworthy. Not surprisingly, he does better with Tory and Reform voters on each characteristic – but, apart from being likeable, plenty of right-of-centre voters have their doubts, especially on whether they trust him.

All in all, he does not look like a vote winner. Bringing him back would be a big risk.

How big? This brings us to the third issue: the Tories’ prospects if Johnson were to become its leader. Plainly, nobody can be certain how the race will end. Much can change in four years. However, thanks to More in Common, we can inspect the starting line. In early May it asked respondents how they would vote if the Conservatives were led by different people. The alternatives made little difference to support for Labour, the Liberal Democrats or Greens. The significant movements were between Reform and Conservatives:

Johnson’s supporters can point to the fact that he does best – and significantly better than both Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. He is the only one of the six who lifts his party above Reform. But 26 per cent is still pretty awful. Johnson is a game tweaker, not a game changer. On these figures, the Conservatives are up two per cent on last year’s general election, and Reform eight points up. In order to turn the next general election into a real contest, the Tories would have to do much better than that, especially if Labour manages to spend the next four years climbing out of the hole it has dug in the past eleven months.

It depends on what the Tories’ real objective is at the next election. If it is to return to power, bringing Johnson back would be a big mistake. He carries his reputation like a ball-and-chain around his legs. There is a limit to how far he can lift his party. In order to marginalise Reform and compete for power the Tories need someone fresh and clean and with a new, compelling story to tell about Britain’s future: a Thatcher or Tony Blair for the 2030s.

Otherwise, the best they can hope for, under Johnson or anyone else, is to block Reform’s advance and re-establish themselves as the dominant party of the Right. But as long as Reform remains in business, the right-of-centre vote will remain divided. The most obvious beneficiary of that, as it was last year, would be Starmer.

Put another way, if the Conservatives fail to find a star that so far lurks unnoticed in their ranks, their choice could boil down to this: a Reform government that buries their party – or a second Labour term in which they live to fight another day.