There isn’t any crafty plan. No secret wheeze to safe Boris Johnson’s return to energy. All there may be is all there ever was, a hazy intestine intuition that it’s higher to stroll away now, maintain his choices open and see how the land lies in a number of months. Johnson’s whole profession has been a collection of such gambles to delay reckonings or alter his narrative. Typically they’ve paid off. However the former prime minister is working out of street.

The easy information are that upon receiving a draft of the Commons investigation into whether or not he lied to parliament over lockdown breaches, Johnson noticed the sport was up. Even a Tory-dominated committee had discovered him responsible. He confronted a sanction critical sufficient to lift the chance of a by-election. His parliamentary colleagues weren’t going to avoid wasting him and, though a current ballot steered he would possibly win, he didn’t fancy the chance.

So he give up and cried foul. His accompanying assertion was a self-exculpatory wail of petulant nihilism. It was a “kangaroo courtroom”; he was a sufferer of injustice and prejudice, a “witch-hunt to take revenge for Brexit” and (a nod right here to his future caucus) finally a plot to reverse it. It was a devious Labour and remainer coup. Any smear of his opponents inside attain was deployed.

This was Johnson going full-Trump. By no means thoughts that the committee investigating him — a committee of his friends — has a Tory majority; by no means thoughts that the proof of his deceit is manifest and that there are seemingly particulars of extra lockdown breaches rising. That is the Trump playbook; the resort to the betrayal delusion. He was cheated, not defeated. The desire of individuals is denied. He alone is their true consul.

And to underpin this nonsense, an assault on his successor Rishi Sunak, with the message that solely Johnson may be relied on to relight the flame of a “correctly conservative authorities” (true conservatism being no matter he wants it to be). Shamelessly he blames Sunak for the shortage of a US commerce deal which he did not safe and cowardice over housing coverage which he demonstrated. The message is unavoidable. Johnson remains to be planning a subsequent act.

However past this positioning and opportunism is there any actual technique? It’s clear he won’t fade quietly away. Even when he can’t return to the highest, he intends to be a nuisance, sniping from outdoors parliament, drawing the limelight and bolstering his fantasy claims to vindication. Some Tories muse that the upcoming sale of the Telegraph gives Johnson different fascinating prospects for mischief.

However there are solely two paths again to the highest and neither is straightforward. The actually lengthy shot is to construct a brand new get together round him amid basic disgust with the present ones. However the electoral system works in opposition to such plans. The extra apparent route is for Johnson to step again earlier than searching for one other, safer Tory seat on the basic election, placing himself in competition to return as chief within the occasion of defeat for the get together.

The speculation could also be clear however the actuality is immeasurably extra complicated. First he has to safe that seat. There are in all probability quite a few constituencies which might take him, although a really ruthless Tory chief has the levers to stop this, not least by suspending him from the get together and candidates’ checklist for the breaches uncovered by the parliamentary investigation. It will likely be fascinating to see if Sunak is ready to be that overtly brutal. He ought to replicate that his adversary would do it to him if the roles have been reversed.

However even when Johnson have been chosen and elected, he would face a special panorama. His most fervent acolytes may have left Westminster; the shrewd tacticians he relied on might effectively have moved to different camps. Formidable cupboard members, the Bravermans, Badenochs and so forth, won’t stand apart for him. And Tories should conclude that they danger going backwards with him as a substitute of a more energizing face. A lot might depend upon the dimensions of any defeat. However even when all of the playing cards fell in his favour, Johnson should face a number of years within the thankless activity of opposition, a put up not ideally suited to his work ethic.

Above all that, there may be one large distinction. As soon as Johnson was an unknown canvas on to which voters may mission their very own hopes. He was a cheeky maverick who the conservative-minded discovered interesting, his private failings deepening their sense that he would tackle the institution.

This time he’s a recognized amount, tried, examined and located wanting. Voters have skilled the dishonesty, amorality and, above all, chaos of a Johnson premiership. It shouldn’t be forgotten that his fall was precipitated by polls exhibiting a collapse in public help.

Tories know he was gifted an enormous majority and frittered it away. It’s true that he confronted shocks that might have taxed any chief however they weren’t what value him his job. It was his character that introduced him down, his laziness and elementary lack of seriousness. If that is the top of his high flight profession, his departure has been suitably opportunistic, comical, grubby and dishonest.

It’s a cliché of politics that you need to by no means wager in opposition to Boris Johnson. This time, it might lastly be price a flutter.

robert.shrimsley@ft.com