Tories will regret not kicking Boris Johson out of Downing Street - Andrew Vine

It has already started happening. Those around Johnson – which means his words in their mouths – accused former Chancellor Rishi Sunak of treachery for resigning because he could no longer stomach the way the Government was being run. It should be no business of Johnson to interfere in who succeeds him, yet it is characteristically cynical of the way he operates to intervene.

To attack Mr Sunak is part of the myth-making the Prime Minister began in his graceless and self-serving resignation speech outside number 10, with no trace of humility or contrition on display, which was the first step on the road to a lucrative post-politics career that will embrace speeches, newspaper columns and his memoirs.

The tale he is trying to tell is clear – that of a great man brought low by lesser lights, of voters across the land cheated of inspirational leadership by subordinates without the courage to share his vision.

The effrontery of this is breathtaking, and its dishonesty is only matched by the lies Johnson told about breaking lockdown rules, or what he knew about allegations of sexual misconduct against an MP before appointing him to a key job.

Yet Conservative MPs are allowing him to get away with it from the position of the most powerful job in the land, which he could yet hold for another three months. Given the hash he has made of running the country, the degree to which he undermined trust in politics and the damage he has done to his own party’s electoral prospects, Johnson should have been unceremoniously kicked out and the deputy Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, installed to keep the business of Government ticking over until a new Tory leader was elected.

Johnson is not a safe pair of hands who can be trusted to behave properly in his remaining time in office, in sharp contrast to Theresa May and David Cameron after they announced their resignations.

Both stepped down because of policy failures. No taint of disgrace attached to them. Whether one supported or disagreed with their views, there was never the slightest question over the probity of either. On the contrary, his lack of probity is what did for Johnson when his own MPs realised that they – and the country – could no longer tolerate the moral vacuum at the top of Government.

Yet they have allowed him to stay, when he should have gone in disgrace. It is possible that events over the coming days or weeks makes them rethink if new scandals emerge, but they should be doing so anyway.

The briefing against Mr Sunak is enough in itself to justify demanding that Johnson takes the short car journey to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation as Prime Minister to the Queen and leave Number 10 the same day.

Conservative MPs should find the guts to give him his marching orders, because any short-term damage to their party will be as nothing compared to the problems that Johnson’s long goodbye could cause them in the months ahead.

The longer he remains in office, the more sentimentality will grow in Tory ranks about him. The chaos of the days before his grudging admission that the game was up, with the Government collapsing amid dozens of resignations, will start to be forgotten.

There will be talk of good old Boris who delivered a landslide election victory, and praise from an emotional Ukrainian president when there is a not-so-surprising valedictory visit to Kyiv. He might even be allowed a final barnstorming appearance at the Tory party conference in October.

If MPs have any sense, they’ll have no truck with this. Whatever diehard Johnson loyalists choose to believe, their idol has become as toxic for the Conservative brand with voters as Jeremy Corbyn was for Labour.

The only road back to credibility lies in admitting the party got it wrong in selecting Johnson as its leader and then backing him despite it becoming clear he was unfit to hold office. That poses awkward questions about why they defended Johnson for most of those vying to succeed him, the exceptions being Jeremy Hunt and Tom Tugendhat, who were not part of his Government.

There is only one answer to those questions – to look voters in the eye and admit they did it out of expediency and on reflection that was a mistake that caused immense harm.

Only complete honesty will do if the Conservatives are to have a road back from the grubbiness of the Johnson years.