MANCHESTER, England — Boris Johnson’s political wizardry was once revered at his party’s annual jamborees. This year, even his staunchest allies don’t want to know him.

Facing a full-blown assault on their immigration and net-zero record from Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK, senior British Conservatives are turning against the man whose electoral sorcery delivered them a landslide majority in 2019.

Johnson, long one of the British right’s most colorful figures, was unceremoniously dumped by his MPs as leader and prime minister in 2022 as the party’s poll ratings slid amid rolling political scandals, including revelations that staff in No. 10, including the PM himself, had breached Covid-19 lockdown rules at the height of the pandemic.

Yet in the aftermath of his departure, Tories still spoke in admiring terms of the coalition of voters he managed to build in 2019 harnessing support in former Labour heartlands, while also clinging onto voters in liberal Middle England who had rejected the departure from the European Union he vociferously championed. Some even harbored hopes he might one day return to recreate the electoral magic.

Yet under sustained fire from Farage — who has been has been trying out a new and unsparingly targeted political attack, repeatedly deploying the term “Boriswave” to describe the surging levels of non-EU immigration to the U.K. under Johnson — even the ex-PM’s staunchest allies are distancing themselves from his legacy.

Trashing the legacy 

In the POLITICO Pub on the fringes of this year’s Tory conference, senior Conservatives who were once ardent admirers were unwilling to go over the top to defend Johnson’s record. 

“The mass increase in migration that we saw, particularly over the last three or four years of the Conservative government, I think those chickens have come home to roost, which has again fed into the Reform bounce,” Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen said on Monday, accepting Johnson had got it wrong.

Houchen demurred slightly, though, when asked about the “Boriswave” label, saying, “The Conservative Party as a whole got it wrong.”

On Sunday, Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel, who served as home secretary under Johnson, said she “absolutely ” accepted that Conservatives would be attacked over a “Boriswave” of migration as the Conservatives seeks to fend off the rising political threat from Reform UK. 

Even a visiting Australian politician got into the mix.

“Unfortunately, for all sorts of reasons, the Johnson government was a disappointment in the end. I guess the last Conservative government — in the end — ebbed out of office,” former Australian PM Tony Abbott also pondered over a pint in the pub on Monday afternoon.

Another former Tory adviser, granted anonymity like others in this piece to speak candidly, said the shift was “probably driven by Farage.”

“You need to blame someone. You need a bad guy.”

Johnson, who has no plans to turn up to the conference, has been a lone voice defending his record. 

“OK, so who are you going to kick out? The Ukrainians? You want to kick out Ukrainians?,” he said when questioned about Farage’s attack in an interview with The Sun newspaper last month. “You want to kick out the Hong Kong Chinese? You want to kick out the nurses? Who do you want to kick out?”

Johnson insisted the U.K. had taken back “legal control” after Brexit. The “problems we face now are illegal migration, people coming across the the Channel illegally,” he said.

On his record on net-zero climate policies he has been less defensive. He has reportedly said in yet another an upcoming book that he went “too fast” on net zero when he was prime minister.

Missing a superstar 

Nonetheless, in the absence of Johnson’s media magic, the Conservatives are yet to find a new superstar. The vacuum is conspicuous at the Conservatives’ low-tempo conference — further complicating current leader Kemi Badenoch’s efforts to keep her position.

“He drew a huge crowd wherever he went — people wanted signatures, they wanted selfies,” said one former Johnson adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“It’s certainly true that the Tories are lacking big hitters — and have lacked big hitters for some time. Boris was the exception. Politics generally is worse off for not having big personalities,” this person went on.

“I do feel that there is a gap now where it’s all a bit boring. Look at Farage. Reform would be nothing without Farage. He grabs their attention. He’s relatable. He’s a man you want to go to the pub with.”

As long as the vacuum persists, so will talk of Johnson returning to fill it. But would he even want to? Friends question whether Johnson’s ambition for a comeback — an eternal parlor game in Tory circles — is as strong as it once was.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if he likes being asked to come back,” his old friend, Shadow Housing Secretary James Cleverly, said Monday morning at the pub. “But it would surprise me if he wanted to give up what I think is a very, very happy set of personal circumstances at the moment,” he added.