Boris Johnson can’t save the Tories from the coming wipeout

Are you beach-body ready? Boris Johnson, who has always projected a joyously uninhibited confidence about his physical form, clearly thinks that he is. The blond bombshell has been basking in Sardinia and is now reported to have a second summer holiday already in the diary which will keep him away from these chilly shores until Wednesday 3 July.

So all the speculation about him helping the Tories out on the campaign trail, being a secret vote-winning weapon and reaching the parts that Rishi Sunak cannot reach, turns out to have been nonsense: he hasn’t offered and he wasn’t asked. Seldom have so many column inches been expended so pointlessly.

Perhaps there will yet be time for a photo opportunity of a beaming Johnson helping the get-out-the-vote operation on election morning near his manor house in deepest Oxfordshire. But that will be it. 

Tellingly, the Times reports that Team Sunak has decided any joint appearances with Johnson would do more harm than good because they have already given up on Red Wall seats where he is popular and are now just trying to save Blue Wall ones where he is less so.