The Economist: Return of the big dog Boris? Johnson looms over a fractured Tory future

Key topics:Boris Johnson hints at a political comeback amid Tory turmoilTories eye Johnson as a desperate bet to outshine Reform UKJohnson’s shadow still haunts UK politics, unresolved and divisive.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com© 2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved..The Economist.People turn to animals when describing Boris Johnson. To his aides, the former prime minister was “Big Dog”. One commentator labelled him a “giant toad”, squatting over British politics. Another said he was a “bulletproof Gunnersaurus”, after Arsenal’s dinosaur mascot. When rumour emerged that Mr Johnson was considering a return to front-line politics, the menagerie expanded. “The big, blond-maned cat is stalking the leader of the Tory party,” said one commentator, panting.Something is afoot. Mr Johnson once sniped at his Tory successors. Now he offers Kemi Badenoch something far more damaging: sympathy. Parties can recover from lousy polling, he simpers. The subtext is clear; the Tories have not been in such a rut since the summer of 2019, when they were polling in the teens and assailed by Nigel Farage. The party went on to win a big majority just six months later. Who led it out of that hole? Me? Cripes!Big Dog left office in 2022 a wildly unpopular leader, after a tenure marked by incompetence, cronyism and a contempt for the norms and rules of British government. His return would be insane. Yet the strangest bit is that every part of the political spectrum would welcome it.Sheer desperation explains why Conservatives outside the court of the Giant Toad mull the idea. After the Tories were walloped in local elections at the start of the month, a poll by More In Common suggested that, among the likely leadership candidates, only Mr Johnson would trump Mr Farage’s Reform UK. Would it guarantee victory? Far from it. For a party staring at death, even a hung parliament would be a triumph.British politics happens at pace and nostalgia comes quickly. Failings become lovable foibles. “At least you knew what you’d got with Boris,” said one voter from Doncaster, revelation falling from her lips, during a focus group. “You got a blooming idiot who just said it how he saw it.” Remember Boris? The people’s buffoon..Read more:.The Economist - Reform’s big win: Problem for Labour, existential threat for Tories.Chutzpah explains why Bulletproof Gunnersaurus thinks he could do it. Errors of Mr Johnson’s era can be blamed on others. High taxes? Blame Rishi Sunak, his former chancellor, who brought down Mr Johnson and eventually succeeded him. High immigration? Blame Mr Sunak for that too. On Treasury spreadsheets, immigrants go in one end and gdp comes out the other.A dark, unspoken cynicism lurks beneath such a strategy. Support for a nativist, right-wing party emerged only when the Conservative Party was led by a brown man. That same party has embedded itself in British politics while the right is led by Ms Badenoch, a black woman. Untangling correlation and causation is tricky. That Reform has a vanguard of online supporters who are if nothing else honest about their racism makes it less so. Reform’s political seed capital came from a nasty place. Thinking all of its voters are racist would be wrong; thinking none is would be naive.If a corner of the Conservative Party is enthusiastic about the return of the big, blond-maned cat, the rest of the political spectrum is ecstatic. Liberal Democrats cackle at the thought. It was Mr Johnson’s ineptitude as much as Brexit that turned prosperous southern England towards the Lib Dems. At one dinner with the former prime minister, a freshly minted Liberal Democrat mp charged towards Mr Johnson, exclaiming, “I wanted to thank you for all the help.”Labour, meanwhile, is happy to remind voters that the country was a mess when Mr Johnson ran it. For all Sir Keir’s blunders in office, it is still preferable to that period. Reformers, who believe immigration is the be-all of British politics, think voters will snarl at the man whose policy allowed 1.3m people into the country in a single year. They call it the Boriswave (as do some Labour staffers). Having the man himself return would only help.Is he popular? No. Is he competent? Also no. Nevertheless…The best argument for Big Dog’s return, however, is catharsis. René Girard, a French philosopher in vogue, argued that society relies on scapegoats in order to rub along. A fight of all-against-all becomes a battle of all-against-one; someone who can personify all their woes and be removed, whether a teenager dragged to the top of an Aztec pyramid or Jesus Christ hung on a cross.In British politics, only Mr Johnson fits the bill. Once almost worshipped, he became reviled. A wannabe good-time king presided over a bad time. Britain’s departure from the eu was a miserable divorce rather than joyful liberation. Lockdown was two years of pain, exacerbated by Mr Johnson and his team breaking the rules they themselves set. His exit from Parliament in 2023 was meant to be a moment of release.Except the scapegoat process went awry. What should have been an electoral bloodletting became a bureaucratic one. When Mr Johnson’s lies over lockdown came to light, a parliamentary committee suspended him for 90 days. This meant a recall petition in his constituency and a by-election. Rather than face angry voters, the former prime minister scarpered. Mr Johnson was not led to the top of an Aztec pyramid; the cross was bare. A metaphorical lynch mob assembled in Uxbridge, the London suburb represented by the former prime minister, but Mr Johnson was nowhere to be found.And so Britain could not move on. Mr Johnson’s shadow looms over both his party and the country. British politics is stuck in a world he built, enduring the same arguments about immigration and Europe. Backlogs from lockdown still jam Britain’s hospitals; the costs of this shutdown weigh heavily on the state’s finances. Mr Johnson was elevated by the British public, but they never had the chance to destroy him themselves. Come back, Mr Johnson. Perhaps Britain will herald you again. Or perhaps it will rip you limb-from-limb and British politics can, finally, start anew.

The Economist: Return of the big dog Boris? Johnson looms over a fractured Tory future

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From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com

© 2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

The Economist

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