Boris Johnson will have the 100 backers he needs to be included in the race to be named the next Prime Minister of the UK, and he is interested in the job, an MP has said. Mr Johnson is reported to be cutting his Caribbean holiday short and returning to the UK to join the race to be named the next leader of the Conservative Party, and next Prime Minister, after the resignation of Liz Truss on Thursday.
Will Walden, former press secretary to Mr Johnson, told Sky News: "I've spoken to someone that's spoken to him and he's on the way back. And clearly he's taking soundings."
Candidates need 100 MPs to support them if they want to enter the vote, and those standing will be named on Monday afternoon. The maximum number of candidates who can stand will be three - with Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt among those said to be interested.
The aim is to have a new leader by Friday, October 28 - although the choice could be made sooner - as early as Monday - if more than half of the MPs back one candidate. Asked if Boris Jphnson will get the support needed to run, one cabinet minister told Beth Rigby, Sky News' political editor: "I'd expect him to get to 100. Even people who resigned from his government were on the terrace yesterday telling colleagues they would now back him and members definitely will."
A friend of Mr Johnson has also told Sky News that it is "likely" he will stand.
Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, told Sky News Boris Johnson will meet the threshold of 100 MPs. She said: "He is a known winner and that is certainly who I'm putting my name against because I want us to win the general election. Having a winner in place is what the party needs to survive."
Suella Braverman, Ben Wallace and Kemi Badenoch may all put themselves forward for the vote.
A Tory MP calling for Boris Johnson to replace Liz Truss said the former prime minister can prevent the party from being “completely wiped out” at the next general election.
When it was put to him Mr Johnson was brought down by a mass exodus of his own ministers, Peterborough MP Paul Bristow told BBC Breakfast: “Well, that was then, this is now. We’re facing a crisis as a party. We could go down and be completely wiped out without Boris Johnson as our prime minister…
“Boris Johnson has a mandate from the members of the party and from the electorate. I’m sure my colleagues will reflect on that when they vote, and we can avoid a general election, we can go out and put this band back together, we can have political heavyweights around that Cabinet table and we can go on and win the next general election. I’m convinced of that”.
He said Mr Johnson can “unite all factions of our party”.
Karl McCartney, the MP for Lincoln who is on the executive of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs said there is public support for Mr Johnson to return as “people have been coming up to me for the past week and saying they want Boris to come back and I certainly do as well.”
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I did not want him to resign in the first place.
“I think the Labour Party and some of the media did a credible hatchet job over six months and got rid of our best electoral asset.
“In the marginal seat of Lincoln I know that my majority, which is the largest it has ever been after 2019, was because Boris Johnson was the prime minister and was the leader of our party that was the most credible person at the time to get the majority.”
Sir David Lidington, who served as a Cabinet Office minister under former prime minister Theresa May, said Mr Johnson’s time in office ended with 60 ministers and parliamentary private secretaries saying “they did not feel they could remain in his government and that he was not fit to lead an effective administration”.
Sir David told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We do need competence now at a time of great economic challenge for this country.
“Boris Johnson has always been somebody who has focused on the big picture, not on detail.
“He is not really interested in the detail of governing and nor when he was prime minister did he appoint a couple of ministers with delegated authority on his behalf to get things done, instead we had bunches of aides in Number 10 busy briefing the media and shouting at each other most of the time.”
Sir David added: “Even on top of the fact that he is still being investigated by Parliament on allegations of deliberately lying to MPs, I think he has had his chance and the Conservative parliamentary party concluded just a few months ago this could not go on and it would not be right for him to continue as prime minister – that, after all, is why he resigned.”
Boris Johnson is not the person to restore the reputation of the Conservative Party, Tory MP Crispin Blunt has said as he called for Rishi Sunak to take over as leader.
“I don’t think we can go back there for the next two years,” the former minister told Sky News.
“Boris Johnson has the most astonishing set of skills but there are one or two weaknesses kicking around in that personality and they were fairly brutally exposed…
“He is probably not the character to restore our reputation for the next two years because of that controversy”.
Mr Blunt said a comeback by Mr Johnson would mean the party would be “probably straight back in the pickle we were in when he left office”.
Mr Blunt added: “Rishi Sunak is head and shoulders rank above the rest of us in terms of his basic personal capabilities of being prime minister, and that’s why he would now be my choice.”
