Back to reality for PM after holiday from political heat

It would be unfair to claim that the by-elections last week in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton were deliberately timed to coincide with a string of international summits Commonwealth, G7, Nato – but it was a fortunate coincidence for Boris Johnson.

- SEAN O'GRADY

Although a few stray questions about his future wafted over to Kigali, Bavaria and Madrid, he was spared much of the political heat waiting for him at home, and Dominic Raab was deputed to face off against (and wink at) Angela Rayner at Prime Minister's Questions.

But, despite a lack of public tumult calling for Johnson's head, the plotting has been continuing, and visibly. As one of his enemies quipped last week, the cat was away so the mice did play. One ominous development is an organised attempt to turn the elections for the Tory backbench 1922 Committee into both a proxy vote of confidence in Johnson's leadership and a means to change the rules and secure a fresh vote to remove him from office.

The difference now is the high-profile intervention of Steve Baker in any takeover of the 1922 Committee. The self-styled Spartan, ex-Brexit minister and chair of the European Research Group cannot be dismissed as some kind of embittered "Remoaner". More than that he enjoys a formidable reputation as an organiser, the sort of man who knows his way around a spreadsheet.