The Times ran a story
yesterday suggesting that Boris Johnson might offer Rishi Sunak a deal under
which Johnson would not attempt to oust Sunak before the next election in
return for Sunak pulling a few strings to find Johnson a safer seat in which to
stand at that election. It might just be a bit of kite-flying to see what
the reaction might be; it might be a deliberate piece of mischief. In the febrile
atmosphere of the Tory Party, Johnson’s ‘friends’ might turn out to be his
enemies after all. But whether it’s actually true or not, it has a certain whiff of
credibility about it. It’s the sort of thing a man who believes himself to be
the saviour of the party and the country would do, even if his belief is shared
only by a tiny minority even amongst his own party’s MPs. The fact that sources
close to Johnson publicly declared
only last month that he would stand again in his current seat – a declaration referred
to by Sunak
yesterday – only adds to the credibility of the story. Johnson’s history shows
that the more times he repeats something the less likely it is to be true.
And that’s the real problem
with the Times story. However true the story itself might be, the likelihood of
Sunak agreeing to Johnson’s demands depends on an assumption that Sunak could
rely on a promise made by a man who has never knowingly honoured a single
promise in his life. Whilst Sunak has amply demonstrated that he isn’t exactly
the sharpest tool in the box, even he couldn’t be that stupid. Could he?
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