Has the Boris spell finally been broken? The Prime Minister has always been blessed with a unique political sorcery: voters have never treated this maverick in the same way as they do other lesser politicians. He has a Houdini-like talent for wiggling out of tight spots. Much to the Left’s baffled rage, his charisma – foppish rather than toffish – bewitched the Red Wall back in 2019. One cannot help but detect among the myriad predictions of the PM’s imminent fall a strong element of wishful thinking, particularly among the Remainers who loathe him.

Partygate has, however, treated the public to a potentially fatal peek behind the stage curtain: a man elected to be the authentic, liberating voice of the people has spent the last two years imposing on them draconian Covid laws which he evidently believed were nonsensical and excessive. The ugly decadence and manipulating levers and pulleys of his court cannot be unseen.

Thus the question Tory MPs ought to be asking is not simply whether the PM’s reputation has been badly damaged by the rolling series of scandals. It has. It is whether his curious political potency – an unlikely ability to win over diverse voters and endlessly bounce back from the edge of oblivion – has been permanently sapped.

Not all the signs are positive. The isolated Prime Minister has gone to ground, reportedly only taking external advice from a handful of long-time political allies, including Lynton Crosby and Lord Udny-Lister. Having banished the Brexiteers who helped him to power from his inner circle long ago, he shows no sign of any desire for a rapprochement. He can count the number of senior Downing Street staff that are absolutely loyal to him on one hand.

Many have poured scorn on the “Operation Red Meat” policies that are being rushed out to buttress the Prime Minister’s support among his base. It is true that they are far from perfect. An announcement to bring in the Royal Navy to help stem illegal Channel crossings might finally focus minds on the need to get a grip on the country’s borders, but it is obviously not going to fix the problem on its own. An indication that the BBC licence fee isn’t long for this world is very welcome, but it will not come good until 2027. A vow to ease almost all restrictions on January 26 reflects a genuine determination to shake off Covid rules more rapidly, but it is unclear why the Government will not act sooner.

Nevertheless, if he can survive the next few weeks, I suspect it would be wrong to write off the Prime Minister altogether. He was given a historic majority in 2019, by winning the votes of millions of people who have never voted Tory before. He was elected not only to get Brexit done, but as an irrepressible political force vested with the role of taking back control of the country from unaccountable and undemocratic elites who had sought to crush the people’s will. The tragedy of Partygate is that it suggested that he was a phoney populist – inauthentic, misleading, and just like all other politicians. If he is to survive, he needs to prove that he is still the man the people voted for.  

I can think of a number of areas where he could take action almost immediately. He has allowed the fires of Brexit to be dampened by process and Euro-bureaucracy. He should make a start at fixing that by rowing back from the capitulation on the European Court of Justice that it is rumoured to be looming on the Northern Ireland Protocol, and showing Brussels that leaving the EU must mean full sovereignty for the entirety of the UK – by triggering Article 16.

He should reassess his piecemeal “war on woke”. Tormented by accusations of bigotry from metropolitan circles, Johnson has limited the Tories to protecting statues, safeguarding freedom of speech in universities, and lobbing mischievous grenades at the Beeb. Red Wall voters, however, are far more concerned with the way the white working class has been systematically overlooked amid the woke obsession with “structural” racism.

He ought to move away from his inauthentic brand of Covid populism, too. He has encouraged the patriotic cult of the NHS in slavish devotion to the polls, and repeatedly delayed the dismantling of Covid rules to cultivate an image of cautious paternalism. But having lost the authority to impose further lockdowns, he has nothing to lose now from a U-turn. He should vow publicly that lockdowns will never be repeated, and lay out a detailed alternative emergency strategy, along the lines of the Sweden model.

Most of all, though, Johnson needs to work out what is the actual point of his premiership. Right now, there is no reforming zeal. Under Prime Minister Boris, the Civil Service remains captive to technocrats, just as under Mayor Boris City Hall remained a monument to Ken Livingston. There is no sense of what the Tories are in power to do. If it isn’t to deliver a strong Brexit, or keep taxes low, or take back control of the borders, or stand up for patriotism, or hold the line against the excesses of socialist utopianism, not least net zero, what is the point of their existence?

Thus far, no other Tory politician has shown that they have what it takes to grasp the contradictions of the post-liberal age, where old certainties have been crushed, first, by Brexit and then by the pandemic. None of his rivals would seem to be capable of keeping together the 2019 voting coalition that he assembled and which he risks throwing away thanks to Partygate.  
Even the problem of the machinery of Downing Street is probably fixable. Although there is much gossip about how the Prime Minister will struggle to detoxify No 10, it would not be the first time that Johnson has somehow pulled off a stunning overhaul of his operations. The first few months as mayor of London were a catastrophe, as he was forced to sack his chief political adviser and his deputy, both in controversial circumstances. A series of new appointments saved his mayorship from calamity.

Not all is lost. But at the heart of his present difficulties is the simple reality that the public will not tolerate Johnson the imposter. He has no choice but to prove to us that he’s the real deal.