A spectre is haunting Westminster: Boris Johnson. The former prime minister has form on this. He has an unnerving ability – either by design or because of his innate nature – to make nearly any situation about him. Before Johnson became PM, it was a standing joke among journalists at Conservative conference – and bear with me, because you take your laughs where you can at Conservative conference – that each year Johnson would turn up and riotously upstage whichever poor suit had the misfortune of delivering the party leader’s speech.
Even now, he still acts like a black hole for attention. Towards the end of last year, the appearance of Johnson’s name on a list of MPs calling for Rishi Sunak to lift the ban on new onshore wind dragged the story up the news agenda, with some more histrionic Westminster watchers calling the intervention a challenge to Sunak’s leadership. Likewise, when Johnson announced he would be attending the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh in November, when Sunak was not, nobody could help but interpret this as a direct challenge to the Prime Minister’s authority.
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