Boris Johnson has intervened at the last minute in the Conservative election campaign, urging wavering Tory voters to stick with the party rather than allow Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to secure a landslide majority.
The former prime minister's appeal to Conservative supporters also underlined how the Tories' focus is beginning to shift to the fight for the soul of the party after an expected defeat on Thursday.
Johnson, who is due to step down in 2022, was asked last week by Rishi Sunak to help boost the Conservative campaign and agreed to give a short speech at a rally in central London on Tuesday evening.
Johnson's allies say the two men had a friendly five-minute chat backstage before the event, but the former prime minister's reappearance suggests he will now play a key role in what happens next within the party.
“I want to make it clear that I was happy when the Prime Minister asked me for help and I couldn't say no,” Mr Johnson said.
We cannot stand by while a Labour government prepares to use a landslide majority to destroy much of what we have achieved.
Johnson also launched a scathing attack on Britain's Reform Party leader, Nigel Farage, in a sign that the former prime minister will oppose the Conservatives embracing the populist leader after an election defeat.
Referring to Farage's claims that the West had provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Johnson said the other parties were full of Kremlin creeps who are effectively making excuses for Putin's 2022 invasion.
They say Putin is a good manager, that he runs a tight ship; and if that is what they mean by a man who shoots journalists, poisons his opponents and murders thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians, I say shame on them.
Don't let Putinists give birth to Corbynists. Don't let Putin's parrots give the whole country psittacosis.
Johnson's allies have said the former prime minister should not back a particular candidate for the Conservative Party leadership after the Tories' expected defeat on Thursday and Sunak's likely resignation.
But one ally said: “He will be looking to influence the debate.” In fact, in the last 72 hours he has become very angry about the threat of a Labour supermajority. He will be interested in how the Tories fight back.
Johnson, who continues to enjoy strong appeal among many Conservative voters, spent much of the election campaign abroad and was largely confined to helping some Conservative parliamentary candidates with video messages and emails.
The fact that Sunak asked him for help, even at the last minute and with only a brief speech, is a sign that the current prime minister needs all the help he can get, with opinion polls suggesting Starmer is heading for a landslide victory on Thursday.
The choreography of Tuesday's event was overseen by Isaac Levido, the Conservative campaign chief, and Johnson's ally Lord Ross Kempsell.
Johnson conspicuously neglected to congratulate Sunak in his speech.
Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “Rishi Sunak has reached a new level of desperation, turning to a man who has discredited the office of Prime Minister and lied to the country time and time again.”
Meanwhile, Suella Braverman, a former home secretary and potential right-wing candidate for the Conservative leadership, was looking beyond election day to the battle to control the party leadership if she lost.
“We need to read the writing on the wall: it's over and we need to prepare ourselves for the reality and frustration of the opposition,” Braverman wrote in the Daily Telegraph, calling for the party to move to the right.
We have failed to cut immigration or taxes, or to implement the net-zero and woke policies we presided over for 14 years. If our best defense is to complain that the left has taken over the institutions, who let it happen?
Braverman was much warmer in her comments towards Farage than Johnson. Conservative ministers attacking Farage are like a patient berating the doctor for his illness, she wrote.
It is a disease that could have been easily avoided if the patient had heeded the warnings years ago, admitted the problem and adopted certain healthy habits.
