My unpopular take is that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the Conservatives. Boris can limp on but he is damaged. A few more months of cost of living, poor polling and by-election defeats can lead to 30 MPs switching sides and getting rid of him. If I was wanting to be the next Conservative leader I would want him to last a while longer so he absorbs a lot of the public hate and then the new leader can take over as the economy gets better (or stays bad, which at worst makes no difference from getting rid of him now). A new leader in 2023 would then give them a bit of time to define themselves and move on from Boris. The counter argument is that the longer Boris stays the more damage he does to the Conservative brand (just look at how long the damage from Blair, Brown, Miliband and Corbyn’s leadership lasted in some form or other), and his ability to make poor decisions will damage whoever succeeds him.
The flip side is that 58.8% of this party stuck by Johnson through all of this and almost any likely leadership contender will be seen as having been a Johnson supporter whether they actually did or not.
Poll
