Whoever is chosen to replace Johnson will have a short term until the next general election.
Then there is the issue of another referendum on Scottish Independence upcoming.
The Guardian's pessimism here is not misplaced.
Well, but my original question was (I know, it disappeared and was somehow I guess automatically replaced by the actual article title): is there any chance Boris could return? I mean, if the choices for the so-called Conservatives are as bad as it looks, one thing Boris did do was motivate people. He just seems so much more, er, presidential, so to speak... and boy, how the bar has been lowered on THAT...
One prediction I got dead wrong is I predicted Boris Johnson's "government" would be lucky to last two months before collapsing with that bumbling doofus in charge. Instead, they won by a landslide. Of course, I was correct that he didn't govern remotely like an actual conservative.
I don't know what the Conservative Party's "message" to voters is, aside from checking to see where the Labour Party stands on every issue, and then drafting a Labour-Lite message based on that. It would be nice to have a party in the UK that actually stood for DIFFERENT policies. The UK Independence Party/Brexit Party did for a brief period, but they were too much a single issue "EU sucks" Party.
The "experts" all predicted that Conservative Party wouldn't last long after Margaret Thather left office after 12 years, as she was the glue holding the party together in the early 90s. John Major was widely seen as weak successor who would swiftly lose to Labour without Thather's coattails to carry him thru. Instead, they stuck around in power for ANOTHER 6 years in a huge upset... so stranger things have happened.