A maximum of three candidates will make it to the final selection for the new British Prime Minister. Among them is Boris Johnson, who was only overthrown by the parliamentary group in the summer. Conservative MPs are divided on whether he would be the savior or the bringer of mischief.
Less than four months ago he took his forced leave as prime minister, now the Tories are already running a powerful “Bring Back Boris” campaign again.
The UK is looking for a successor to Prime Minister Liz Truss, who resigned on Thursday. The choice could fall on Boris Johnson. What sounds like a bad joke to some Conservative MPs is seen by others as a last resort in the crisis. The decision will be made next week. Until then, a bitter power struggle rages between the right wing of the parliamentary group and the moderate MPs.
With Truss stepping down after 44 days of chaotic governance, the successor candidates have until Monday noon to qualify. To do this, they must have 100 votes from faction members who support them. The parliamentary group committee, the 1922 Committee, deliberately set the hurdle so high in order to filter out interested parties and speed up the election.
Rishi Sunak remains the faction’s favourite
Three names topped the list on Friday: former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Speaker of Parliament Penny Mordaunt. Sunak has garnered more votes than Johnson and Mordaunt so far. As the Tory Group consists of 357 MPs, a maximum of three candidates can qualify. A vote within the parliamentary group is expected to result in only two candidates remaining early next week. Another vote should then signal to the party which candidate the parliamentary group would prefer to see. Then the party members have a few days to vote online. The result will be announced on Friday.
Sunak has the best chances within the parliamentary group, even though he helped trigger Johnson’s downfall on July 5 when he resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sunak is the hope of all those Tory MPs who have had enough of Johnson’s antics and the libertarian experiments of the group’s right wing. Even as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had proven himself to be a fiscally cautious force and warned Truss against her inflationary program of radical tax cuts. But the party base voted for Truss, partly because they rejected Sunak as a “kingslayer”. In addition, the party base resents Sunak that his wife temporarily did not pay tax on her income from worldwide assets in the United Kingdom, which was, however, quite legally compliant.
Johnson has not yet publicly stated whether he would run. In the meantime, however, the “Bring Back Boris” campaign is in full swing. The right-wing press rejoices that, if anything, the entire right wing of the parliamentary group would support Johnson. What is meant are the 60 Brexit hardliners of the so-called European Research Group (ERG). They pushed former Prime Minister David Cameron into the June 2016 Brexit vote and then undermined Theresa May as Prime Minister in order to install Johnson and ultimately Truss.
Always in the hope that Johnson or Truss would implement their libertarian program. After failing with Truss, the group is now trying again with Johnson. Its former leader, Secretary of Commerce Jacob Rees-Mogg, has already backed him. The attempt by the right wing of the parliamentary group to nominate other candidates with former interior minister Suella Bravermann or trade minister Kemi Badenoch seemed hopeless because of the high hurdle of 100 votes.
Fear of Johnson’s return and hope for it
The fact that Johnson is back in the field is highly controversial in the group. Some MPs threatened on Friday with resignation, by-elections or even the split of the party. They resent Johnson’s hard Brexit policies and populism. And not only that: in the next few months, the parliamentary standards committee will have to decide whether Johnson has betrayed parliament with his lies about the lockdown parties. If confirmed, he could be subject to temporary sanctions, which would normally be grounds for resignation.
Within the faction, opinions differ as to whether Johnson would be an asset or a liability in the next election. At the time of his resignation in the summer, he was less popular than almost any prime minister before him. Many voters feel left alone and are therefore calling for a new election, which the opposition leaders are calling for anyway. Of course, that won’t happen. The constitution of British parliamentary democracy states that the party may govern until the next general election as long as it can form a government.
Some faction members hear in their constituencies that Johnson is still popular with the grassroots. Indeed, many voters still give Johnson credit for getting Brexit through, without being able to say what Brexit would actually have gotten them. For many voters, however, this is secondary. They see Johnson as the “winner”, as the charismatic buddy who supposedly is on their side. Many members of parliament do not want to do without this in the next election, as they are currently fearing for their seats in parliament.