Boris Johnson has refused to rule out a political comeback as he began his last week as prime minister with the first stop on a “farewell tour” around Britain. Speaking in Dorset during a visit to a scheme for improving access to high-speed broadband, Mr Johnson was asked if he would rule out a return to frontline politics.
“I think on the whole people in this country are more interested in their gigabit broadband than they are in the fate of this or that politician,” he said.
The winner of the Conservative leadership contest between foreign secretary Liz Truss and former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak will be announced next Monday and will take over as prime minister the following day. Mr Johnson has spent much of his final weeks in office on holiday, first in Slovenia and then in Greece and he has already moved out of Downing Street to Chequers.
The prime minister and his chancellor of the exchequer Nadim Zahawi have refused to take any action to cushion the blow of soaring energy prices but Mr Johnson said it would be the first item on his successor’s agenda.
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“Whichever of the two candidates gets in next week, what the government is also going to do is provide a further package of support for helping people with the cost of energy,” he said.
“What we’ve got to do is get through the tough months — and I’m not going to shrink from this, it is going to be tough in the months to come”.
Sixty three per cent of people in Britain think it was right for Conservative MPs to remove Mr Johnson from office, compared to 25 per cent who say it was the wrong thing to do, according to a YouGov poll published on Tuesday. But among Conservative voters, 53 per cent think it was wrong to remove Mr Johnson from office.
Polls suggest that Conservative members will punish Mr Sunak for what they perceive to be his pivotal role in Mr Johnson’s downfall and Ms Truss is the runaway favourite to become the next prime minister.
Ms Truss has not outlined her plan to address energy prices and the cost of living crisis but she is expected to accelerate the granting of new drilling licenses for oil and gas in the North Sea. The Times reported on Tuesday that up to 130 new licenses could be approved.
The British government’s energy security strategy last April called for another licensing round in the autumn but Greenpeace condemned the plans as wrong and ineffective in addressing the current crisis.
“Unleashing a North Sea drilling frenzy isn’t a plan to help bill payers but a gift to the fossil fuel giants already making billions from this crisis,” the group’s chief scientist Doug Parr said.
“New oil and gas could take a quarter of a century to pump out, will be eventually sold at global prices, and have no real impact on energy bills, yet still fuel the climate crisis.”
