Senior Conservatives accused Boris Johnson of increasingly “delusional” behaviour on Saturday night after he said he was already planning for his third term as prime minister, just two days after the Tories suffered a catastrophic double byelection defeat at the hands of the Liberal Democrats and Labour.
As talk of replacing Johnson intensified, several senior MPs questioned why the prime minister had been allowed to give interviews in which he said he would refuse to change his ways, and then, in even more defiant terms, told journalists at the Commonwealth summit in Rwanda that he was planning to be in Downing Street until well into the 2030s.
