'Greased piglet may lose his Get Out of Jail Free card if two key seats are lost'

Friday, June 24, is the date that could decide lying, clueless partier Boris Johnson’s fate.

Lose red wall Wakefield and blue wall Tiverton and Honiton in the previous day’s scandal-triggered by-elections and he’ll look at his most vulnerable.

One wise, senior Tory MP told me a devastating double defeat would bring a make-or-break moment for the beleaguered Prime Minister and the Conservative Party.

“If both seats fall we must decide whether we save him or save ourselves, because it would only get worse for us all,” he predicted.

With the Government doing little to ease the cost of living crisis and the PM and Chancellor Rishi Sunak battling over a North Sea windfall tax, Johnson’s regime is a shambles.

Whitehall investigator Sue Gray’s report into boozy lockdown bashes is expected this week and will be grim for the fined lawbreaking PM.

Yet the greased piglet may finally lose his Get Out of Jail Free card if the two key seats are lost following nearly 500 council defeats earlier this month.

Keir Starmer would be in trouble himself should Labour somehow fail to overturn a 3,358 Tory majority in West Yorkshire after the Conservative MP elected three years ago was found guilty of molesting a teenager.

Tiverton is a tougher Tory nut to crack for Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats yet a huge 24,239 Conservative majority may be ploughed up after tractor porn MP Neil Parish’s disgrace.

Sue Gray is due to publish her report in the next week (PA)

Losing Wakefield and narrowly clinging to Tiverton would be an inconclusive verdict that Downing Street would seize to defend a bruised and battered PM.

“Partygate lost us respect, the PM no longer feels like a winner and the cost of living crisis is costing us votes,” said another Tory MP.

“Many colleagues owe their seats to Boris Johnson but they’ve got to decide whether also losing them because of Boris Johnson is a price they’re prepared to pay.”

Boris Johnson has come under pressure to introduce a one-off levy on firms which have benefited from globally high oil and gas prices (PA)

The irony for a Labour Party yearning for Johnson’s scalp is his stumbling into the next election would be to Starmer’s advantage.

Lose the two by-elections and selfish Johnson would still need to be dragged out of No10 by Tories discovering self-interested backbones.

The catastrophe for Britain is that the worst PM in modern history puts himself first, second and third.

Survival is all that counts for him, as voters pay a heavy price for buying the Con-servative’s guff in 2019.