“I’m going to do it, Dudders!” roared ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson down the phone to James Duddridge MP, his former Lord Commissioner of the Treasury and one of his many current enablers. It’s “Boris or Bust”, tweeted Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg. “Action this day!” chirruped Bill Cash.

I’m sorry, but have these people gone completely mad?! 

I thought Boris Johnson would be a very successful Prime Minister, but he wasn’t. What possible reason could there be to believe it will work this time? He changed his Downing Street team, what, four, five times? He has virtually no capable politicians willing to serve him. His cabinet would have to be drawn from people who wouldn’t normally be allowed anywhere near senior public office; the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt would almost certainly resign, leading to more market discontent. Indeed, Boris’s re-installation, with the concomitant instability it would create, would spook the City yet again: sending us back into the spiral we saw when Truss-Kwarteng launched their mini-budget. 

It’s bonkers, absolutely bonkers — like picking up a tasty chocolate, realising it’s a turd, then washing your hands and five minutes later picking it up again in the hope it’s suddenly a tasty chocolate now. 

Ordinary voters are understandably at their wit’s end. But here’s the thing. There is – still, extraordinarily – a pathway through.

Admittedly, it’s a slim one. But it is reasonable to believe that a Rishi Sunak administration — able to draw its senior ministers from across the party — will be a stable one. 

Sunak and Hunt will comfort the markets. James Cleverly and Ben Wallace will remain at the top table. Michelle Donellan and Kemi Badenoch’s profiles will continue to increase. Perhaps figures like Dame Helena Morrissey and Lord Bew can be brought in. Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murthy, will be calm and appropriate, not an embarrassment like Carrie Symonds.

It is not inconceivable that, under these conditions, the polls begin to improve. Maybe the Tories start to push back into the high 20s. Perhaps Labour finds itself under further scrutiny. The deal is not yet sealed for Keir Starmer. 

The Tories are forced by their re-engagement with reality to do difficult things — raising taxes and trimming public expenditure — but the reasons are better communicated, and the politicians engaged in this activity are reassuring and competent. 

The circus of chaos has been banished; calmness and equanimity radiates from a Sunak Downing Street. There is a sense that, actually, the country is being governed again. Things are under control. 

Do we want to go backwards?

By April 2024, a few judicious tax cuts can be offered — targeted at the least well off. The mood is slightly better. Sunak has done well. The polls tighten further. The punters start to wonder: do they want to risk Labour? And, you know — yes, he’s very rich — but actually, they find they quite like the Prime Minister. He’s slick but he’s quite charming and very clever — perhaps the UK is well represented by someone slick, charming and very clever. Crucially, he seems reasonable. Do we want to throw it all away? Do we want Jess Phillips and Angela Rayner, hectoring us from positions of power? What about Brexit; finally, that issue seems to have settled down? Do we want to go backwards? 

Nothing is guaranteed. But it is not beyond the realms of comprehension that Sunak does win a 2024 election. It’s certainly logical to presume he would staunch the bleeding, and take the Tories to a better result than the current alternatives. 

As I’ve written in this magazine before, too many Tory MPs are low-grade, and many of those conspicuously low-grade figures are now deliberately goading their party. “The free market experiment is over,” remarked the mind-numbingly stupid Tobias Ellwood, in a now deleted tweet. “It’s been a low point in our party’s history. The reset begins … Honoured to be the 100th Tory MP to support #ReadyforRishi.”

Sunak needs the vocal support of Ellwood like a hole in the head. But Ellwood doing an Ellwood is not reason alone to reject Rishi Sunak. He also enjoys the support of figures such as Kemi Badenoch, Steve Baker and David Frost. “I want Rishi to win and I want Conservative members to please engage with the reality,” said Baker.

Unfortunately, a lot of Tory members are currently not engaging with reality, preferring instead to display precisely the sort of deranged, cult-like behaviour they laughed at, only a few years ago, in supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. 

On social media, members are sharing bizarre Boris Johnson memes: the famous Lord Kitchener recruitment poster with “Boris, your country needs you” superimposed over it; a photo of Johnson giving a speech accompanied by the text, “Boris lead us — we will follow”; screenshots from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with Johnson’s face crudely photoshopped onto Aragorn.

It is a personality cult

This is not normal. It is a personality cult, and, ideally, MPs will avoid involving such cultists in this crucial leadership election. They’ll eventually calm down, and snap out of it. Or just drift away: fine also. 

The best outcome — for the United Kingdom as well as the Conservative Party — is a Rishi Sunak coronation on Monday evening. The Tories must resist Johnson’s Falstaffian embrace. This time, it will suffocate them.