BORIS Johnson last night promised Tory MPs he will get the country “back on its feet” as he stood on the cusp of a stunning political comeback.
The former PM also vowed there would be no more sleaze scandals on his watch if he returns to No.10 as he told his MPs: “Only I have the mandate to lead Britain.”
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He got back from his Caribbean break yesterday morning and immediately hit the phones to rally support for his leadership bid.
After stepping off the plane at Gatwick Airport, he sped straight to London where he held crunch talks with his closest aides.
Shortly before 3pm, Team Boris declared he had the 100 MP backers needed to land a spot in the final selection process, although just 56 had publicly endorsed him.
Yet many Tory MPs warned they would sit as independents should Mr Johnson return.
If enough quit, the party could lose its majority, accidentally triggering an election.
One big back bench critic of Mr Johnson said: “If he gets through he’ll tear our party apart. It will be more civil war.”
For now, the stage is set for a titanic battle between Mr Johnson and friend-turned-enemy Rishi Sunak — the former Chancellor whose resignation forced him out of No.10 just six weeks ago.
After an all-night flight, Mr Johnson sat bleary-eyed in a room in front of two large Union Jacks as he rang round Tory MPs to try to convince them to back him.
At around 3.30pm Mr Johnson — based Millbank Tower, a few hundred yards from Parliament where Mr Sunak was working — spoke to Red Waller Lee Anderson.
Mr Anderson, MP for Ashfield, Notts, said: “We had a clear-the-air chat. He reassured me that things would be different, that we will work hard, move forward and get the country back on its feet.”
Mr Johnson also told him there would be no repeat of past scandals, such as the delay in sacking former chief whip Chris Pincher, who was accused of groping two men at a Tory members’ club. Mr Anderson said: “His pitch was very reassuring.
“I said, ‘We can’t have another Pincher episode,’ and he promised me that we wouldn’t, or that the reaction would be swifter.”
Mr Johnson also told allies that, following Liz Truss’s ousting, only he had a mandate to lead the UK.
Tory MP James Duddridge said: “I asked him what he thought the big campaign issues were that I should be pushing and he said ‘I am the only person who has got the mandate to get this done’.
“He said that his phone is ringing off the hook with people calling to support him.”
In a frenzied day of political plotting, backers of Mr Johnson, Mr Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, the first to throw her hat into the ring, scrambled to woo colleagues.
By last night, Mr Sunak had 119 public endorsements, more than double Mr Johnson’s tally. However, sources from Mr Johnson’s campaign said he had passed the crucial 100. Ms Mordaunt was lagging on 23.
Allies of Mr Johnson claimed her team approached his camp to do a deal in which she would land a Cabinet job if she quit the PM race and backed him.
Her supporters dismissed the rumour as “rubbish”.
Big beast Priti Patel, meanwhile, got behind her old boss.
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The former Home Secretary said: “I’m backing Boris Johnson to return as our Prime Minister, to bring together a united team to deliver our manifesto and lead Britain to a stronger and more prosperous future.”
Mr Johnson’s backers were last night using poll findings to help get wavering MPs on board amid fears he was losing momentum.
It came after The Sunday Times reported that several Tory donors who have previously backed Mr Johnson were telling him that now is not the right time for him to return.
Mr Johnson’s team were telling MPs in Red Wall seats that surveys indicate only he can win the key Labour general election targets.
The survey, which was carried out just days before Ms Truss quit, asked Tory voters which leader would make them more likely to back the party at the next election.
A total of 56 per cent said they would prefer Mr Johnson to be the PM ahead of Liz Truss.
Some 48 per cent answered that they would favour Mr Sunak in the Portland Communications poll.
If Mr Johnson goes on to win the vote it would be the most stunning political comeback since his hero Sir Winston Churchill returned to No.10 in 1951 after six years out of office.
Meanwhile, a Deltapoll survey found that Mr Johnson was the Conservatives’ best weapon against Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
The poll, for the Mail on Sunday, found that if an election were to be held today Labour would romp home with a vast 320-seat majority.
This would be cut to 26 with Mr Johnson at the Tory helm.
Simon Clarke & Alok Sharma: ‘This is our last chance to regain the UK’s trust’
AS we prepare to pick a new leader we realise this is the the Conservative Party’s last chance to win back the confidence of the British people.
Our mandate was to deliver Brexit and unleash the potential of the whole nation.
Thanks to Boris we swept away years of stalemate and got Brexit done.
And in 2019 we started to fix the second, making progress while tackling the pandemic.
While talent is evenly distributed across the country, opportunity is not.
With his levelling up agenda, Boris gave us a unique opportunity to unlock this talent.
Billions of pounds from the public and private sectors have been helping parts of the country forgotten about by Labour or taken for granted.
Many thousands of jobs have been created in our traditional industrial heartlands, including in green growth sectors such as offshore wind.
Boris started us on the path but there is much left to do and if we fail to deliver we face defeat at the next election.
That is why tomorrow we will be backing Boris.
In a world destabilised by Putin’s horrific war, we must tackle the energy crisis, support families with the cost of living and, vitally, get our economy growing.
Boris is a world leader who can chart a course through difficult waters. We need that today.
Our constituents want to see progress — bills and taxes falling, wages rising, public services working and high streets booming again.
This government was elected with Boris Johnson as leader on a manifesto to deliver these things. It’s on this platform we’ll be judged.
We are writing jointly today, as MPs in the North East and South East and as Cabinet Ministers who have seen Boris’s ability to drive change.
We encourage our colleagues to put recent events behind us, unite behind him and get back to delivering on the priorities on which we were elected in 2019.
