Why Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should expel Boris Johnson from the Conservative Party - Andrew Vine

His majority of 20,137 gives them a fighting chance of keeping the seat, though if they do, it will likely be with a much-reduced margin.

And they really don’t like to think of the implications if it goes wrong for them.

In the forthcoming flurry of four by-elections, a great deal of attention is going to be on Selby and Ainsty, because if the Conservatives can’t hang on to such a safe seat, that points to Labour winning a general election.

But it wasn’t drizzle or the local campaign that was putting a dampener on their spirits. It was the damage done to their party by its former poster-boy, Boris Johnson.

If the disgraced ex-Prime Minister, officially branded a liar by last week’s scathing report from the Commons Privileges Committee, fondly imagines he is still the darling of grassroots Tories, he’d be swiftly and uncomfortably disabused of the notion by the people I talked to.

They can’t stand him. Even a couple of people who acknowledged that they were once fervent supporters hadn’t a good word for him.

Lies and bluster don’t play well with the good people of Selby and Ainsty, or for that matter anywhere else in Yorkshire or the north.

Mr Johnson’s ceaseless self-promotion irritates them, and they view attacks by his acolytes such as Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg on Rishi Sunak as infuriating and disloyal.

Of course, a chat to a few sensible Yorkshire Conservative members isn’t a remotely reliable way of gauging the mood in the wider party.

Elsewhere, in the wake of the committee’s damning verdict on Mr Johnson’s lies to Parliament and the public, there were dark threats of deselection made to Conservative MPs if they dared to support its conclusions in yesterday’s Commons vote.

It may not be the case in Yorkshire, but it’s clear that some pockets of Tories increasingly resemble those deranged doomsday cults that periodically emerge from the backwoods of America, their members so in thrall to a charismatic messiah figure that they cannot see what is glaringly obvious to the outside

world – that he will lead them to catastrophe.

The role of prophet is one which Mr Johnson is delighted to adopt, and he’ll be playing it to the hilt in the months to come, in speeches, newspaper columns and possibly books.

And there will be those within his party who will swallow his every utterance despite the unprecedentedly severe nature of the verdict on his conduct and opinion polls showing a majority of the public share the loathing of him expressed to me by some of the people in Selby.

This has been the case ever since the first reports of lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street emerged.

For an expression of how deep public dislike of him runs, it’s worth casting our minds back to the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend just over a year ago.

When Mr Johnson arrived for the service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s, the crowds outside booed him, an extraordinary thing to happen at such an occasion.

Yet he continues to cast a spell over some Conservatives, who stubbornly believe he remains the vote-winner of 2019 instead of the disgraced and failed ex-Premier of 2023.

If Mr Sunak is to have any chance of avoiding bruising defeats in the forthcoming by-elections – and next year’s general election – he has to break the Johnson spell.

There’s a simple way for him to do that. Expel Boris Johnson from the Conservative Party.

There is every justification. He has damaged its reputation for honesty and competent government, lied to Parliament and fomented such dissent within its ranks that it is bitterly divided and will struggle to present a united front to the electorate.

Mr Sunak is obviously a politician who seeks consensus rather than conflict, and that does him credit after the turbulence and irresponsibility he inherited.

But he needs to show a streak of ruthlessness in dealing with Mr Johnson’s poisonous legacy. Boot him out. I know at least a few Conservatives who would cheer such a move, and there are likely to be many more who would join them in celebrating.