Could a reformed Boris Johnson lead Nigel Farage’s Reform Party or is it just fantasy politics?
IN the world of fantasy politics, Boris Johnson bides his time, gathers his allies and storms back into Parliament on a tide of acclaim from the cheering masses.
He retrieves the Tory crown — which is his by right anyway — trounces Remainer foes and installs a true-blue, tax-cutting Conservative government.
To his many fans, this is far from fantasy.
They live for the second coming.
Boris himself, seething over his expulsion from Parliament at gunpoint, has made it clearish that he will be back.
“I have never seen him so angry and vengeful,” says one of his closest allies.
Yet others believe the waters are already closing over, barely a weekend after his bombshell resignation as Uxbridge MP.
“He has gone, waving Union Jacks if you like, rather than be dragged kicking and screaming out of Parliament,” says ex-Downing Street aide Guto Harri.
In the words of Cabinet minister Grant Shapps: “The world has moved on.”
Wishful thinking, perhaps.
Most read in The Sun
But so far only two Tory MPs, Nadine Dorries and Nigel Adams, have joined Johnson’s march out of Parliament.
A couple more are on resignation watch.
Other diehards have made it clear their loyalty to the Tory party is still greater than their adoration of St Boris.
Rishi Sunak and his Downing Street team are delighted to see the back of Boris.
More significantly, so are many former fans who are sick of the non-stop BoJo psychodrama.
They are enraged by claims of an unlikely plot between Rishi and Labour’s Harriet Harman to give Boris a kicking over Partygate.
Few believe lurid allegations of a “dishonourable Downing Street swindle” over Boris’s axed list of peerages.
Dream ticket
What’s more, there is no appetite for yet another suicidal change at the top.
So BoJo’s days as a party leader seem to be over, unless . . .
Unless there is an oven-ready political machine waiting for a charismatic right-of-centre leader to break the mould of stale old two-party politics.
Reform, formerly known as Ukip, stands ready to welcome him in an instant.
Indeed, an offer is all but in the post.
Genial TalkTV host Richard Tice is the current leader but has yet to emerge from the shadow of party president Nigel Farage.
Farage himself rates Boris highly for having delivered Brexit’s 17.4million voters — more than half the UK electorate in 2016.
A grateful Farage can claim he delivered a chunk of Boris’s 80-seat majority by barring Brexit Party candidates from standing against Tories in 2019.
Elation over that landmark victory has since turned sour.
Reform has mopped up millions of grumpy Tories who feel betrayed by the Government’s failure to Take Back Control, curb immigration and help small businesses.
Private polling suggests four million are ready to back Reform whenever the next election is called.
That number would double if Farage returned to the fray.
With Boris on board, it might double again.
Is this a dream ticket or just another version of fantasy politics?
For one thing, Boris is totally opposed to Reform’s call to stop the small boats and send back asylum cheats.
As London Mayor, he sought an amnesty for hundreds of thousands already here.
Second, Reform is hostile to Boris’s Net Zero green crusade.
Third, partnership with Farage — seen by many voters as the real hero of Brexit — might be Mission: Impossible.
Is there room for two giant egos in the same party?
Yet Brexit is the single issue that identifies both men.
Without Ukip’s threat to Tory election hopes, David Cameron would never have offered a referendum.
Hilariously chaotic
And without Boris Johnson’s magnetic appeal as leader of the Leave campaign in 2016, voters of all parties might not have voted for Brexit.
“Historically, Boris has only one legacy . . . Brexit,” says a Reform enthusiast.
Perhaps, so.
But Boris achieved that legacy by an almost effortless process of simply being himself — easy-going, buffoonish, cutting corners, hilariously chaotic.
He engaged public sympathy by going off piste, forgetting his script, letting his shirt tails fly, hanging from a zipwire.
Read More on The US Sun
Building a minority party like Reform into a vehicle for government requires commitment, self-discipline, long-term planning, a taste for detail and single-minded determination.
Does that sound like BoJo’s cup of tea?
Nic is Nicked
EX-SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has been arrested by police over an alleged gaping £600,000 hole in her party’s Indyref campaign coffers.
Hubby Peter Murrell, party chief for almost a quarter of a century, has already been hauled in after a £60,000 luxury motorhome, allegedly SNP-funded, was seized outside his mum’s home.
This represents a hammer blow for struggling new SNP leader Humza Yousaf, who has presided over a ten per cent slump in the polls.
And a political lottery bonanza for Sir Keir Starmer and his hopes for an outright Labour majority in 2024.