When Boris Johnson resigned as Prime Minister in the summer, he likened his fellow MPs who had turned against him to a herd.
"As we've seen at Westminster, the herd is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves," he said at a lectern outside Number 10 Downing Street.
But after the chaotic implosion of his successor Liz Truss' premiership, is the herd moving back in Mr Johnson's direction?
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If Conservative MPs do indeed coalesce to reinstall him as party leader, it would be an act of desperation. A choice of self-interest rather than looking longer term at the bigger picture.
"Boris or bust", the slogan adopted by his staunch supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg, neatly sums up the feelings of many in the Tory parliamentary group.
After leading the Conservatives to a landslide victory in 2019, Mr Johnson is seen as the only person capable of reversing a collapse in Tory support in opinion polls and saving their seats at the next election.
It is a slogan that admits in the eyes of some Conservatives their party faces an electoral meltdown without him at the helm.
But it also waves a wand of political amnesia, willfully forgetting the reasons why Mr Johnson was ousted in the first place.
His brazen mishandling of a raft of controversies - from Wallpapergate and Partygate to the Owen Paterson lobbying row and Chris Pincher affair - shamefully lowered the bar for standards expected in public life.
Mr Johnson pledged to "get Brexit done" but the UK continues to grapple with the fall-out of leaving the European Union.
His brief spell out of office does not wash away the cycle of obstruction, denial and deflection that chipped away at Tory MPs' trust in his premiership the last time.
Nor does it remove the future hurdles he faces, such as an ongoing parliamentary probe into whether he deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown gatherings at Downing Street.
Is Mr Johnson really the best person the Conservatives have to offer to lead the serious business of seeing the UK through the current cost-of-living crisis? Many would not regard him as the 'details man' needed at this time, to say the least.
Far from toiling away in the Commons during the current economic and political turmoil, Mr Johnson has been holidaying in the Caribbean.
And just months ago he was pushing for "cutting taxes", similar to Ms Truss whose unfunded plans sent the markets into a tailspin.
The high threshold of support from at least 100 Tory MPs will be Mr Johnson's biggest challenge in a bid to regain the party leadership.
More MPs may well back another contender such as Rishi Sunak or Penny Mordaunt, but if the contest reaches the wider membership Mr Johnson could have the upper hand in party grassroots popularity.
Mr Johnson's return to the top spot however may trigger further upheaval within the party, with suggestions that some disaffected MPs could resign the whip in protest.
In the early stages of this fast-paced contest, some have called for Mr Sunak and Ms Mordaunt to join forces on a combined ticket in a bid to stop Mr Johnson regaining control.
All this Tory upheaval inevitably places Northern Ireland’s own political problems further down the pecking order - and throws into further confusion what happens next at Stormont.
The Secretary of State's pledge to call an Assembly election if power-sharing is not restored by Friday looks much less certain as he could no longer be in post by then.
The new Prime Minister, who could be confirmed as early as Monday, may have a wholly different strategy on how to tackle Stormont's deadlock and the Northern Ireland Protocol impasse.
The collapse of Ms Truss' premiership has led to calls on all sides for greater political stability, but another round of Mr Johnson at Downing Street has little chance of steadying the ship.
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