Boris Johnson ‘calling off the canine’ from attacking privileges committee report

Boris Johnson has dramatically made a double retreat from all-out verbal struggle with Rishi Sunak over the damning report which concluded he lied to MPs over partygate.

First, he has ordered his closest allies within the Commons to not vote in opposition to the privileges committee report that proposed a 90-day suspension if he had nonetheless been an MP.

In a significant U-turn, the former prime minister has instructed his supporters “it’s time to come together and move on” and “turn down the temperature and calm down”.

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Secondly, Mr Johnson seems to have steered away from political controversy in his new Daily Mail column by writing – bizarrely – about his battle to drop pounds and making an attempt a slimming “wonder drug”.

With MPs braced for an additional blistering assault on the privileges committee, Mr Johnson has chosen as a substitute to jot down about utilizing injections to stifle his cravings for cheddar and chorizo.

Mr Johnson does, nevertheless, write that when middle-aged MPs drop pounds they could be about or launch a management bid, a bid shut allies have instructed Sky News he could launch after the following election.

His resolution to “call off the dogs” – as MPs are calling it – and keep away from a bruising confrontation in a Commons debate on Monday was revealed to Sky News by his shut ally Sir James Duddridge MP.

“Boris’s view has changed,” mentioned Sir James. “I spoke to him and he mentioned the vote isn’t going to make any distinction and it is time to come collectively and transfer on.

“We want to turn down the temperature and calm down. I don’t think there’s going to be a vote. Very few people are going to turn up because it’s only a one-line whip.”

But one other shut ally instructed Sky News: “Don’t rule out Boris going for leader of the Opposition after the next election. He’s going to go submarine for now. For now, he wants to regain the reputation as the columnist everybody loves.”

Mr Johnson’s Daily Mail column, which the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments complained it was not instructed about till half-hour earlier than the paper introduced it, in a “clear breach” of the ministerial code, is rumoured to be price a giant six-figure sum.

The column started: “I first thought that something was up when I saw that a certain member of the cabinet had miraculously changed his appearance. He had acquired a new jawline. His neck emerged without effort from his collar.

“When he rose from his chair on the cupboard desk, that chair now not tried to cling longingly about his hips. I received it! He had misplaced weight, stones and stones of stomach…”

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Though the ex-prime minister didn’t identify the cupboard minister, it’s understood to be Nadhim Zahawi, who was schooling secretary after which briefly grew to become chancellor beneath Mr Johnson after Mr Sunak resigned.

But in what might have been a jibe on the slender Mr Sunak, who the ex-prime minister’s allies accuse of stabbing Mr Johnson within the again when he give up, he mentioned he considered Julius Caesar and wrote: “Let me have men about me that are fat,’ said the Roman dictator, shortly before his assassination. ‘Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look’.”

Mr Johnson added: “If an otherwise healthy middle-aged man displays sudden weight loss, I reasoned, there are only two possible explanations. Either he has fallen hopelessly in love, or else he is about to mount a Tory leadership bid.

“Then a type of colleagues got here up and whispered the reality – that there was a completely separate clarification. He had entry, he mentioned, to a surprise drug. ‘It stops you eager to eat,’ he mentioned.

The second colleague is known to be Mr Johnson’s shut ally and former Cabinet Office fixer ally Nigel Adams, who he tried to ship to the House of Lords and who, like the previous prime minister, has resigned as an MP, forcing a by-election in his Selby and Ainsty constituency.

Mr Johnson wrote: “I consulted the physician, and he instructed me that I used to be a perfect candidate for these appetite-suppressing medicine.

“It’s a cinch, said the doctor. All you need to do is inject a tiny dose of clear Ozempic fluid into your abdomen, once a week, and hey presto – no more raiding the fridge at 11.30pm for the cheddar and chorizo washed down with half a bottle of wine.

“He wrote out the prescription, I zoomed to the chemist’s; and although I used to be frankly a bit bowled over by the price, what the hell, I mentioned to myself, consider the advantages to well being.

“So for weeks I jabbed my stomach, and for weeks it worked. I must have been losing four or five pounds a week – maybe more – when all at once it started to go wrong.

“I do not know why, precisely. Maybe it was one thing to do with continuously flying all over the world, and altering time zones, however I began to dread the injections, as a result of they have been making me really feel in poor health.”

And perhaps revealing too much information, he added: “One minute I’d be wonderful, and the following minute I’d be speaking to Ralph on the large white cellphone; and I’m afraid that I made a decision that I could not go on.

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“For now I am back to exercise and willpower, but I look at my colleagues – leaner but not hungrier – and I hope that if science can do it for them, maybe one day it can help me, and everyone else.”

Mr Johnson’s column will reinforce the view of many Conservative MPs that he goals to return to the Commons on the subsequent election – and certainly mount a brand new management bid, whether or not he’s leaner and fitter or not.