The Sun says he wants to “wrestle back the keys to Number 10”. For the Express, it would be an extraordinary political comeback.
The paper believes that following a planned indicative vote on the final two candidates, and before party members have their say, the loser could come under huge pressure to stand aside if there’s a big margin of defeat.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Johnson supporter, tells the Telegraph he’s strongly in favour of letting party members decide.
Several papers report on efforts by senior Conservatives to broker a meeting between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
Not one of the papers’ editorials explicitly backs the idea of Boris Johnson returning to Number 10, or indeed any other candidate. The Daily Express expounds on Johnson’s qualities but concludes only that the party must come together.
The Daily Telegraph treads a similar path; while the paper’s former editor, Charles Moore, urges him to “sit this one out”, saying there’s no evidence Boris Johnson ever took care of the public finances while in office.
The work was apparently commissioned by their reservist colleagues. One soldier tells the paper, “you can see the white lines in the car park, it’s not exactly a warzone” adding “I wouldn’t want it in my office”.