Can Boris Johnson’s Charles de Gaulle act pay off?

It is only a month since Boris Johnson gave up his dramatic attempt to regain the Premiership he reluctantly surrendered in July. Already he is making headlines once more. 

In an interview with CNN a slimmed down and bubbly Boris caused a diplomatic rumpus by accusing France and Italy of going wobbly and claiming that Germany wanted to see Ukraine quickly defeated by Putin’s invasion last February (thereby less than subtlety suggesting that only the firm resolution of one Boris Johnson kept a wavering Europe on Kyiv’s side). 

For good measure, he dismissed claims that Brexit was a cause of our current economic woes as ‘nonsense'. When asked about the chances of him becoming prime minister again, Boris repeated the mantra he used to use before 2019 – that he was more likely to be decapitated by a frisbee than enter No 10 – before helpfully reminding us that he then actually did become PM.

As if we could forget it. In a few short words, Johnson not only recalled the two major achievements of his three years in office – getting Brexit done and supporting Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s aggression – but dropped a heavy hint that his ambitions to return to power are by no means extinct.

It was a vintage Boris performance and duly drew a stinging rebuke from Berlin: a spokesperson for Chancellor Olaf Scholz angrily accused the former premier of ‘having a unique relationship with the truth’. But Boris would have reflected that annoying Germany never did a British politician much harm.

So, realistically, has Johnson more than a snowball’s chance in hell of returning in glory, Partygate and his other manifold sins forgiven if not forgotten, to save his party and country, in their hour of need? Or are his ambitions a fevered fantasy – the product of a massive ego entirely unhitched from political reality?

In 2024, the likely year of the next election, Johnson will be 60 – a mere stripling compared to ageing world leaders like Biden (80), Trump (76) and Putin (70). If he hangs on to his Uxbridge constituency, he may find himself among the few leading Tories left standing after their probable coming rout at the polls. Even if he is defeated, given his popularity among ordinary Tory party members, he will doubtless soon find a safer seat happy to embrace their hero.

The huge affection still enjoyed by Johnson in the country, as well as at Westminster, is sometimes forgotten. We know that had he entered the race to succeed Liz Truss last month (and 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady has confirmed he had the 100 MPs’ votes to do so) – he would likely have trounced Rishi Sunak in the subsequent election by Tory party members still furious at Sunak and Tory MPs for turning on him.

It was only Boris’s realisation that his party was split down the middle – and that he would find it impossible to build a credible government from his own supporters – that persuaded him to withdraw from the contest. Cannily, he will also have calculated that in an economic hurricane the austerity imposed by his successor would bring the Tories huge unpopularity and could easily lose them the next election.

And then? As a historian and Churchill biographer, Boris will be well aware of the examples of two ageing 20th century statesmen who fell from grace – only to be brought back to power by popular acclaim when their countries faced an existential crisis.

In 1940, Winston Churchill became prime minister at the age of 65 after years in the political wilderness for his almost lone opposition to his party’s appeasement of Hitler’s Germany. Defeated by a Labour landslide in the election that followed his legendary and victorious wartime leadership, Churchill was voted back in 1951 for a final Indian summer of power.

Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, General Charles de Gaulle also came from nowhere to embody the spirit of continuing French resistance; with Churchill’s support, he formed the Free French movement to carry on the fight against the Nazis who had conquered his country. By 1945, De Gaulle was in power in liberated Paris as the undisputed leader of France.

But disgusted by the antics of pre-war politicians who had returned to their fractious ways, De Gaulle resigned in a huff and withdrew to his country home in the village of Colombey-des-Deux-Eglise. Ten years later, in 1958, he was back: recalled to power by his grateful countrymen and women to extract France from the unwinnable war in Algeria. De Gaulle remade his country’s constitution, founding the Fifth Republic with himself as president, and enjoyed a decade back in power before his final retirement and death in 1970.

If the Conservatives – as seems highly likely – go down to ignominious defeat in 2024, will Boris not be the obvious choice for a desperate party to turn to as it seeks renewal and redemption? And won’t Boris, like Cincinnatus returning from the plough, be ready and willing to answer the call to come back from his own Colombey-des-Deux-Eglise and save us all (again)? You can bet the farm he will.