“He can’t stand not having attention. It is connected within it. Well, he’s playing with us. He does it on purpose, so we all rush to write articles saying: “Will he come back?”, “Can he come back?”, “How will he come back?” It’s really quite funny,” said Sonia Purnell, Johnson’s biographer. Although Conservative party rules prevented him from standing in this leadership election, few would rule out a bold second crack at prime minister in the future. “He won’t want to go out that way, although he got his plaudits – though not from Theresa May,” Purnell added. “He always measures himself against others. That’s what you’ve been trained to do at Eton. It will constantly look at who managed to stay in for how long. And three years for him is a very bad look and he won’t like that. “But even more than that, he just wants to be ‘Top Dog.’ Forget “Big Dog”. He is slated to win. Then, once he wins, he doesn’t care. It’s all about winning, so he’ll see it as a challenge.” Several former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom have returned to stand for re-election. Sir Winston Churchill, Johnson’s hero, was prime minister twice, although he and Labour’s Harold Wilson who achieved the same, did not step down as party leaders in between. “I think you’d have to go back to the 19th century to see people going in and out [without remaining as party leader]said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Conservatives From 1945. William Gladstone was prime minister, then resigned as Liberal leader in 1874, but was subsequently elected prime minister on three other occasions. “Certainly in the 20th century you don’t see people coming back like that,” Bale said. “It is not something that even Johnson’s great hero [Churchill] has done.” A Johnson return was possible but unlikely, Bale believed. Johnson being referred to the Privileges Committee over Partygate, which could lead to his suspension, would be a huge obstacle, he added. A report by the House of Commons privileges committee on Thursday made it clear that Johnson could be forced to face a by-election in his Uxbridge constituency if he is found to have misled MPs about Partygate. Former No 10 aide Dominic Cummings, now Johnson’s nemesis, claimed the prime minister is backing Liz Truss’s leadership campaign as he believes she “will blow and she can come back”. Johnson’s supporters still want to circumvent the rules by having a separate ballot of party members before the final leadership runoff, with a simple yes/no vote on whether to accept his resignation. Other parties have re-elected the same leader after they quit, such as Alex Salmond regaining the leadership of the Scottish National party and Nigel Farage in Ukip. And Johnson can’t resist a challenge. Those who have observed him closely believe that he believes that fortune changes and that disasters are never as final as people think. “He’s 58. He’ll think of himself in the prime of life. He will think he learned a lot by being prime minister. And it refers to the fact that he was undefeated in elections. So, I would be very surprised if he disqualifies [a comeback]said Johnson’s biographer Andrew Gimson, whose book Boris Johnson: Portrait of a Trouble Maker at No 10 is published in September. Johnson was already the comeback kid, Gimson said. “There was talk of the next Tory prime minister as soon as he entered parliament. Then he got into terrible trouble at the end of 2004, Liverpool and the ‘inverted pyramid of bullshit’. Everything went wrong. “There was a vacancy after Michael Howard lost the 2005 election. Johnson couldn’t last. Very few MPs thought he was credible. So he supported Cameron. Then Cameron wouldn’t promote him because he didn’t want a loose cannon old Etonian stealing his thunder. So Boris’s rise to Westminster was blocked.” “He could have done a Piers Morgan, become a highly paid TV personality, do very well-paid columns and make a lot of money as a media star,” Gimson added. Instead, he stood against Ken Livingstone as mayor of London. “This showed how committed Boris Johnson is to politics.” Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST From releasing a 2,500-word ministerial statement about his “achievements”, to his resignation speech outside No 10, “he is not leaving as a broken man or as a man who feels this is the end”, Gimson said. “In other words, he says they stampeded like a lot of frightened buffalo. That he made him through the lily-blowing parliamentary party. And, although he had become very unpopular in the ConservativeHome polls, there are still quite a few members who hold him in high esteem. Well, watch this space. “He will know that some members of the public will like the sheer improbability of a comeback from someone who seems to be down and out. And he’s going to want to prove to all the people who danced on his grave that he’s not actually dead.”
