Boris Johnson is gaining ground in his audacious bid to return to Downing Street despite critics warning he risks plunging the Tories into further chaos over the looming parliamentary inquiry into the Partygate scandal.
As the former prime minister returned from his Caribbean holiday to rally support among MPs, Rishi Sunak remained ahead and favorite to win with nearly 90 publicly declared backers, including Dominic Raab and Sajid Javid, and with the his supporters claiming that it had happened. the threshold of 100 names needed to enter the ballot.
However, Johnson won the support of five current cabinet ministers: Ben Wallace, Simon Clarke, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Alok Sharma and Anne-Marie Trevelyan, while former home secretary Priti Patel is believed to be ‘is considering coming out in his favour.
Johnson’s allies boasted he would “easily” reach the 100 MP threshold and argued he would be a strong candidate to win a vote of the 150,000 Conservative members.
They said he was seeking a “unity pact” with Sunak that could prevent the contest from having to go to a membership vote.
But a rival leadership camp questioned whether he would actually reach 100, amid reminders of how his leadership fractured the party when he was in Downing Street.
Neither Johnson nor Sunak have yet formally declared, while Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons, became the first to announce she was running.
Critics of the former prime minister said some Tory MPs were likely to go independent or defect to another party if he won again.
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A source close to MPs’ privilege committee, which is investigating whether Johnson lied to parliament about Downing Street and Whitehall parties during the Covid pandemic, said there was a “vast amount of damning material” against him.
Another MP source said the committee had gathered large amounts of written evidence which could be released shortly, and was preparing to take oral evidence as soon as in the next 10 days, potentially sitting for four hours in day, three days a week for several weeks to get through it all.
They argued it would be a huge distraction for Johnson if he became prime minister and risked igniting public anger over the scandal that saw police fine him and others for breaking Covid rules during the lockdown.
Jesse Norman, Tory MP and Foreign Secretary, said returning Johnson would be a disaster. “There are several very good potential candidates for Tory leader. But to choose Boris now would be, and I say this advisedly, an absolutely catastrophic decision,” he said.
William Hague, the party’s former leader, told Times Radio that bringing Johnson back was the worst idea he had heard in his 46 years as a Conservative and would lead to a “death spiral” for the party.
If all three candidates make it to the polls with the support of more than 100 MPs each, there is a chance Sunak and Mordaunt between them will try to knock Johnson out of the contest.
Johnson has about 45 publicly declared supporters. Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, is one of Johnson’s organisers, while defense secretary Ben Wallace, who ruled himself out of the race despite his popularity among Tory members, said he would “lean towards ” support Johnson.
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“I think he’s still going to have some questions to answer about that [Partygate] investigation,” Wallace said, but added, “He had a mandate and I think that’s an important thing that we all have to consider.”
James Duddridge, an MP who supports Johnson, told PA Media: “I’ve been in touch with the boss on WhatsApp. He’s flying back. He said: ‘I’m flying back, Dudders, we’re going to do this. I’m willing to do it.”
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Johnson’s allies said they hoped a deal could be reached with Sunak and that he wanted to sit down with his former chancellor, whose resignation over their differences led to his departure from No 10 last month.
Johnson will argue that only he has the ability to win an election, despite an Opinium poll suggesting Sunak would do better against Labour’s Keir Starmer. Sunak’s supporters suggested a deal was unlikely, but that the former chancellor would be willing to talk to anyone.
Some of Mr Johnson’s backers think it could be possible to persuade a ‘unity pact’ cabinet to ‘get rid of’ the privileges committee inquiry into Partygate, arguing it would drag ministers, officials and advisers into giving evidence and prolong public attention on the matter.
A sitting prime minister could only dismiss the inquiry by winning a motion in the House of Commons to stop it, or he could stop it by calling an election.
A senior former cabinet minister said the risk with Johnson was that “you never know where the next embarrassment is going to come from”. Apart from Partygate, there were questions about a donor funding the refurbishment of her Downing Street flat and her failure to deal quickly with lobbying and sexual harassment scandals.
Some Tory MPs have raised eyebrows at the former prime minister’s decision to go on a two-week holiday in the Caribbean, partly while Parliament was sitting, and his willingness to let his lifestyle after the first minister be funded by wealthy conservative donors.
It has recently declared funding for two different types of accommodation for JCB boss Anthony Bamford and his wife Carole in September and October worth £13,500. The Bamford family also hosted Johnson’s wedding party this summer, raising more than £20,000.
A company run by Jamie Reuben, son of David Reuben, one of the billionaire property developers Reuben brothers, recently donated £85,320 a year in office expenses for the former prime minister.
Although Sunak remains the favourite, the idea that Johnson could feasibly return to No 10 is beginning to sink in among Tory MPs who ousted him.
One of the top benches, Tory, said: “I feel like he’s going to get all 100 nominations. And with membership, I think it would be Boris. I really do. What’s been instructive is the amount of emails I’ve had from my local , not all members of the party, it’s true, who said come back Boris.
“There was a lot of anger about how he was dismissed. So if it’s about the members, I think it goes back to No. 10.”