Johnson's disciples are an existential threat to Tories

If things had been going the way the Bring Back Boris campaign had wished, then Rishi Sunak would have resigned by now in abject shame at the local election results, and Boris Johnson would be party leader and prime minister again, by acclaim

- SEAN O'GRADY

They hoped for the biggest comeback since Lazarus. A few months ago, it looked just about plausible. After the restoration of Johnson, so the dream went, there’d be a contrived vote in the Commons to call off the “kangaroo court” select committee into Johnson lying to parliament, and the Tories would be catapulted into a 10-point lead over Labour, a fifth term in office, and all would be well again in our unicorn cakeist kingdom.

Things haven’t quite turned out like that, and the present conference in Bournemouth of something called the Conservative Democratic Organisation, or CDO, demonstrates not how strong the cult of Boris is these days, but how rapidly marginalised it has become. Marginalised from power for the moment that is, but with immense capacity to cause trouble now and into the future as the party stumbles towards a historic defeat.

Given that the main effect of the CDO is to demonstrate to a bemused public precisely how hopelessly shambolic, divided and confused our governing party is, the group should be more accurately termed the “Conservative Democratic Disorganisation”, such is its power to create further mayhem at a time when the present administration is anyway very obviously unravelling.

That said, things could have been even worse for Sunak and his beleaguered gang at the top of the party had Johnson himself turned up in person (he instead appeared via video message). So they made do with the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine Dorries and Priti Patel instead. That’s right, the usual suspects.