Yesterday, I presented a petition to Downing Street as part of the Together Declaration campaign group. We had collected around 200,000 signatures from people opposed to lockdown restrictions and vaccine mandates. The anger that the PM currently faces is in great part down to these authoritarian measures, rules which clearly No 10 saw as senseless given that it ignored them. 

A little over two years ago, I was part of the BackBoris leadership campaign. Having led the unprecedented grassroots party campaign to secure a no-confidence vote in Theresa May, I was pleased to have a Prime Minister who I knew would get Brexit done and whose libertarian instincts could be trusted. 

It is hugely disappointing to realise that, instead, Boris Johnson now leads the most authoritarian Government in our history, his reputation damaged as a consequence of that authoritarianism. The restrictions are a massive invasion of personal liberty and freedoms and it was inevitable that politicians would end up breaking them. 

However, these are not the worst misdemeanours of our Conservative Government. The spending brought about by lockdown policies has engendered economic illiteracy at the heart of government. This is seen not just in higher taxes and runaway public spending, but in the failure to secure the Brexit legacy. We benefited hugely from the vaccine rollout, a massive achievement by Boris, but delivering the huge potential gains from leaving the EU has not been prioritised as it should have been. Net zero is another concern. Banning gas boilers and hiking customers’ bills means declaring war on the very voters we won over in 2019. 

Yet despite all this I have no appetite at the moment to repeat what I did in 2019. 

Most obviously this is because Boris won an 80-seat majority when Mrs May failed to win a majority in the 2017 election. But it is deeper than that. In 2019, I felt compelled to do what I did as I knew Mrs May was destroying the party and the country. I believed I had no choice. 

There is a choice now, but the choice is Boris’s. At this moment of greatest danger comes the moment of greatest opportunity. The real issue is what the Conservative Party stands for and what we want to achieve in power. Boris needs to reset his Government by taking advantage of the opportunities Brexit affords us with his old zeal and gusto; we have to return to low taxes with less government and more Conservatism.

We need to consign lockdown measures to history – including masks, isolation requirements and travel restrictions – and change how advice is delivered to the Government and Cabinet. The No 10 office needs strong, politically savvy leadership, with a chief of staff focused on delivery.

Boris has the ability, charisma and talent to turn this appalling situation around. The question is whether he still has the right instincts and the will to act on them. We will find out in the next few days and weeks, because this really is pressing. What is certain is we need to win the fight for Conservatism. If Boris fails to take up this challenge, then the letters from MPs will go in and we will have fresh leadership. But I still believe there is a chance the PM can deliver what he promised.