Conservatives must get rid of Boris Johnson to win 2024 election - David Behrens

Yet there is another, more tangible reason for the Conservatives to force a leadership election sooner rather than later, and it’s one that strikes at the heart of most MPs – saving their own skin.

For under the present leadership, the chances of the Tories retaining power at the general election 24 months from now are about as slim as Will Smith hosting the next Oscars. It is time for them to look beyond Boris.

It shouldn’t be necessary to have to point that out, and the fact that the party hasn’t already grasped it demonstrates the extent to which they have misjudged the public mood – not once but twice.

First, it must be evident that if the PM’s avoidance of lockdown rules still rankles two years after the event, it will continue to do so for another two. His disloyalty in the spring of 2020 was not a marginal infringement but a betrayal of the values in which the rest of us had invested.

It means he can no longer be considered the “epic election winner” to which the former Cabinet minister Michael Portillo referred this week. Yes, he was elected Mayor of London twice, despite the capital’s traditional Labour leanings, and he led his party to an 80-seat majority in 2019 – but his winning streak was snuffed out along with the candles on that birthday cake.

The mask had slipped. Suddenly, he wasn’t the game old buffer from Have I Got News For You but a selfish and superficial oaf at a time when the very opposite qualities were needed.

Portillo pointed out that there was no obvious candidate to replace him as Conservative leader – but that ought to be taken as a challenge to find one pretty darn quick, if the party is not content to be in opposition for perhaps a decade from 2024. Because there is not the slightest evidence that we will see Boris bounce back before then.

On the contrary, the Government’s second misjudgment of the national mood betrays even more of its elitist sense of priorities.

Just compare the Chancellor’s magnanimity of two years ago with his meanness now, as spiralling inflation causes us to question whether we can afford to eat and keep warm at the same time. Where are the furloughs from paying the gas bill for the next six months?

The difference, at least in part, is that large businesses were at financial risk from the pandemic; this time it is individuals who are bearing the brunt. The collapse of the economy was unthinkable, but the destitution of families along the way can be written off as collateral damage by an administration that doesn’t care.

Beyond question is the protective ring being thrown around the six giant energy companies right now but not around their customers. These firms banked more than £1bn in profits before this month’s rate cap “adjustment”, yet there they were on Tuesday, disingenuously telling MPs that rising prices were not their problem to solve.

Indeed, the biggest giant of all, SSE, complacently told its customers last month that they could keep themselves warm by cuddling their pets, eating porridge and “doing a few star jumps”.

Here was the unacceptable face of capitalism against which even Edward Heath, another out-of-touch Conservative leader, railed 50 years ago.

It is the affront at this injustice, quite apart from the insult of parties in lockdown, that will take out those 80 seats in two years’ time unless someone hangs an “under new management” sign outside Number 10.

But that won’t happen until the party catches up with the rest of us. The charismatic Johnson was the man of the hour in December 2019 but we’ve turned the clocks forward since then – and it is strength of character, not charisma, that his successor will need in order to win back trust.

I dare say that after the council elections a fortnight from now, MPs in the most marginal constituencies will begin to realise this quite suddenly.