With the conservative party descending into chaos and fractional infighting, a petition calling on the return of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister has been signed by more than 10,000 conservative party members and supporters in just a couple of days.
The petition organised by the Conservative Post follows a similar that saw some an astonishing 15,000 members urging the party to put the former Prime Minister on the ballot for theleadership contest organised by the Party this summer.
This astonishing potential return comes in the wake of growing speculation that Liz Truss will be asked to step down as the leader of the Conservative Party at the end of the monthby senior MPs and apparatchiks following what has been seen as her disastrous handling of the mini budget just a few weeks ago.
Members of the party have expressed a growing sense of anger and bewilderment at the policy making chaos at the heart of Government following the so-called “fiscal event”, the sacking of Kawsi Kwarteng the second shortest chancellor in British history, the return of Jeremy Hunt who then preceded to unpick almost all of the tax cuts announced in the mini budget and a sense that the Prime Minister has lost all authority or control.
The sense of anger at the chaos unleashed by the Prime Minister is also shared by both members of parliament and members of the public. During a recent meeting of the 1922 committee, one MP, Robert Halfon, accused Ms Truss of trashing 10 years of work to establish the conservative party as a party which looks after the interests of ordinary people.
While a slew of polls have shown both the unpopularity of the Conservative Party and of the Prime Minister personally.
Indeed, in a recent poll conducted by Opinium, the Prime Ministers personal approval rating had collapsed to -47, worse than the net personal approval rating for Mr Johnson during the height of the “Partygate” scandal.
Perhaps most worrying of all for Ms Truss was a YouGov poll that showed the Prime Minister is now even less popular than Jeremy Corbyn was at his lowest point. The poll found her net favourability had fallen by a staggering 28 points in less than a fortnight to -59 – By contrast the former leader of the Labour Party’s net favourability was -55.
The findings of that poll were confirmed by Ipsos, which gave Ms Truss a net rating of -51. This is worse than Boris ever recorded but matched the rating that the pollsters gave John Major a month after the Black Wednesday fiasco in September 1992. Sir John went on to lead the Conservative Party to its biggest loss since 1906.
Meanwhile, the former Prime Minister is on a speaking tour of the USA with party members and supporters now questioning the decision by a small group of MPs to ditch Mr Johnson, who had given the party its biggest majority since the 1980s.
One Boris supporter told parliamentnews.co.uk that we had reached a political point where his return to high office was “now possible”. Indeed, the Boris ally suggested that he would switch seats imminently to ensure that he would remain an MP following a general election.
Pressed for further details the supporter said that the Reigate seat was looking extremely attractive. The seat is currently held by Crispin Blunt who has announced but he will be stepping down at the next election.
The seat has a current majority of over 18,000 and is attractive to the dozens and dozens of Conservative MPs which polling suggests will lose their seats at should election take place in the coming weeks and months.
Parliamentnews.co.uk contacted Mr Blunt’s parliamentary office and asked for a comment about speculation that Boris Johnson was eyeing up his seat, but at the time of publication he had not responded to our requests.
ENDS