Boris Johnson’s claims he could return to politics “should be taken seriously”, a top Tory aide has said.
Philip Blond, a former Adviser to David Cameron, said Boris Johnson has “resigned to reserve his political capital” and not to lose his title as the man who always wins.
He told GB News: “I think Boris is now really quite unpopular in the country. I think that he resigned to preserve his political capital because he wasn’t sure he would win the vote in Parliament. He wasn’t sure he’d win any recall petition and he wasn’t sure he’d win any by-election and then his status as the man who always wins would essentially vanish.
“So he’s preserved his political capital in the event of a likely Conservative defeat at the next election. Boris will have plenty of options – there will be plenty of constituency parties who would be thrilled to have him as their MP. So I think this is an act of political self-preservation.
“I think we should take his own words seriously about coming back. But I think that the real issue is that he didn’t succeed with an unprecedented opportunity and an enormous majority, a new working class electorate whose needs simply weren’t met, who voted against mass globalisation, and mass migration, and what they got was mass migration, more globalization, and free trade agreements, which undermine indigenous British industry.
“So he didn’t have the policy mix or the electorate that he himself brought into being and that’s the real tragedy. That’s what we should be talking about. And it’s not really clear that Conservatives have anybody in the parliamentary party who can speak to that electorate.”
