And so it has come to pass. We were told some time ago, via the Times and sources very close to Boris Johnson, that eventually Rishi Sunak’s plight would be so very parlous that he would turn to Boris Johnson.
At the time, many of us viewed this as merely more evidence of Boris Johnson’s view of the indispensability of Boris Johnson, but now we learn that Sunak believes in it too, because Johnson is apparently being asked to write to tens of thousands of Tory voters imploring them to vote Tory.
That this entails some measure of endorsement of Sunak will, of course, make the task more complicated, as the former Tory prime minister’s regard for the present one is no wider than a silver teaspoon. But then Johnson has always said that he stands ready to serve, and he is always ready to self-serve. And so he will do it, and it will be as honest and truthful as the reports he wrote back in the day exaggerating the threat from Brussels to the sufficiently bendy banana and heralding the ban that wasn’t on prawn cocktail crisps.
There are many approaches he could take, of course. He could parrot Sunak’s line that “the plan is working”, which it is, insofar as Johnson, who was lazy, arrogant and useless, was succeeded by Liz Truss, who worked harder, but was unhinged and useless, and was replaced by Sunak, who works very hard in his own way, in his own Prada loafers. He too has proved useless, to the Tories and the nation – and all who think a future government, however well meaning, will need a functional opposition. But one can say that the PM curve has risen a bit in terms of effort.
What will the letter say? Will it mention getting Brexit done? Lorry-driving party members can read it as they queue and queue at Dover.
Will it mention the pandemic? He changed so many lives back then. And the Covid inquiry heard claims that his staggering ineptitude as the man in charge ended a good few of them too.
What will it say on levelling up? The idea really never really worked in the “red wall”, where Labour sorts voted Tory for the first time in 2019. Still, it’s hard to look at the reported £1m contract Johnson signed with the Daily Mail in the aftermath of his failed premiership and say no good came of it. He levelled himself up. He led by example. If others struggled to match him, not his fault.
So it will be quite the endorsement landing on Tory doormats: one failed, disgraced PM telling members to vote for another failed, derided PM whose landmark policy, earmarked as his legacy, the former dismissed two months ago as “absolutely nuts”. It makes perfect sense to them, but no sense to anyone who hasn’t drunk their particular brand of Tory Kool-Aid. This is why oblivion looms on 4 July.
Hugh Muir is the Guardian’s executive editor, Opinion
