Boris Johnson's days are numbered

We waited in anticipation yesterday with rumours abound that the 54 MP threshold was about to be breached and Boris Johnson would face an imminent vote of no confidence from his MPs, and the odds of the Prime Minister being replaced by the end of March spiked to a record high of 50%.

To me, a departure this early always looked unlikely. There are echoes at the moment of the dying days of Theresa May’s premiership when MPs routinely briefed the press about May’s impending departure, but she held on longer than suggested.

In terms of logistics, too, Johnson being replaced as early as March would require a pretty tight timeline. Conservative leadership elections typically last around 60 days following the leader’s resignation, so for the PM to be replaced by the end of March would require his resignation or removal by next Sunday (30 January) at the latest.

Laying Johnson’s departure date as March 2022 or earlier still looks good value, though it’s clear from the almost daily briefings to the press from disgruntled Tories, the leaks around ‘partygate’ and the not-so-secret wining and dining of MPs by aspiring leadership candidates that the parliamentary party expects the Prime Minister’s departure to be a question of when, not if.

To me, all signs point to Johnson’s departure in the second or third quarter of 2022, available to back at 4.1 and 6.4, respectively. Glancing at the calendar for the rest of the year reveals a minefield of events for the PM that he is unlikely to get through unscathed.

Starting next week at the earliest, Sue Gray is likely to report back her findings on partygate. She will probably be critical but is unlikely to provide any smoking gun for Johnson’s immediate removal. The fact the government have deflected so much criticism onto the outcome of Gray’s report suggests they are not overly fearful of its findings.

The aftermath will be more interesting, however. Strategically, anyone sitting on more explosive partygate allegations will in my view wait until after Gray’s findings to leak it to the press, in order that it doesn’t get bogged down by the potential damp squib of a report.

At some point in the next month or so, Johnson will probably face the inevitable vote of no confidence from Conservative MPs, but he’s likely to survive this. Theresa May won a confidence vote thanks to over 100 MPs on the government payroll who are assumed to have backed her (lest they lost their jobs), even though a majority of backbenchers voted to remove her. Some back of the envelope calculations: assuming all 54 MPs who hand in letters to the 1922 Committee vote against the PM, even if as many as 1-in-10 so-called payroll MPs (around 150 in number) vote to lose their own jobs, more than 70% of the remaining backbenchers would be required to declare no confidence in order to oust Johnson from office, which looks like a huge ask.

Surviving a confidence vote wouldn’t make him safe, though. His predecessor survived her confidence vote 200–117 but hobbled on for just a few more months before resigning after a bad set of elections. Johnson will thus be dreading May’s local elections, which looks set to be difficult for the government based on current polling.

Towards the end of the year, the Conservative Party Conference takes place in October. Would the party really want a lame duck PM giving the headline speech?

The most likely timeline looks something like this: Johnson is ousted or resigns after the May local elections, a leadership election takes place over the summer and a new leader is in place by September and is able to properly introduce themselves to the electorate at conference.

Predicting Johnson’s eventual replacement is a more difficult game, but for what it’s worth Nadhim Zahawi looks like a decent outside shot at 32 (3%) on Smarkets.

Recommended bets

Boris Johnson exit date Apr-Jun 2022 @ 4.2

Boris Johnson exit date Jul-Sep 2022 @ 6.4

Nadhim Zahawi next Conservative leader @ 32