Is Johnson the man to lead the Tories at another election given his record?

READ MORE: Kevin McKenna: As Scotland and England embrace capitalism, the Left has let us all down

Given the next General Election could be in 2023, it might be our straw-haired premier will be saying farewell to Downing Street after just four years at the top and handing over the jumbo-harness to either Rishi Sunak or Sajid Javid; if, that is, the Tories win again.

Johnson’s place in the history books is assured, given his tenure has covered the two biggest upheavals since the Second World War: Brexit and the Covid pandemic.

“Unlike May, who will be a footnote in history, Boris will be the defining leader because of Brexit. Like Churchill, he is a big player. He is walking history,” declared one ex-Conservative minister.

Today is the second anniversary of when Boris, finally, achieved his life’s ambition: kissing the Queen’s hand and agreeing to form a government as Prime Minister.

Ironically, the “Chequers One” will be reflecting on his rollercoaster premiership from the splendid self-isolation of his 16th century grace-and-favour mansion in the beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside.

The PM’s initial purpose was to end the Brexit psychodrama that was driving the country to distraction. From Downing Street he pledged to defy the “doomsters [and] the gloomsters,” and end the country’s era of “unfounded self-doubt”.

But getting Brexit done was far from easy.

An exhausting ground war continued to play out at Westminster, even more dramatically than under the previous premiership of Theresa May.

Boris’s promise that Britain would be out by Hallowe’en 2019 was broken due to stiff resistance from the Remain faction, fearful he was preparing to plunge Britain into a no-deal nightmare.

The confrontation reached its zenith when the PM got the Queen to prorogue parliament – seen by opponents as a disgraceful attempt to stop MPs scrutinising his Brexit plans. In Boris’s book of political warfare, the ends justify the means. Nicola Sturgeon branded him a “tin-pot dictator”. The matter ended when the Supreme Court ruled the PM’s act unlawful as it prevented Westminster from doing its job.

Grudgingly, the Old Etonian accepted the ruling but the procedural wrangling continued with Boris expelling several Tory colleagues from the party for defying him in a Commons vote.

However, once a revised withdrawal deal was sealed, ending the prospect of a no-deal, the parties agreed to a December election, which produced a total Tory triumph: an 80-seat Commons majority.

Parliament, subsequently, ratified the UK-EU withdrawal agreement and Brexit was set to happen finally on January 31 2020, albeit with an 11-month transition period to ease the departure.

READ MORE: Benefits cut warning as 40 per cent of Scots on Universal Credit are in work

The new Downing Street operation, with Cummings and other Vote Leave strategists at its heart, promised to “level up” Britain, focusing on the people’s priorities.

But, in this week’s BBC interview, the former aide claimed his boss didn’t have a plan and he and others were, remarkably, considering ways to oust him.

Then in March, the Covid nightmare descended. Everything changed. “It’s been hellish for the PM,” said one senior Tory. “It has been a time for Stoicism – it has not sat easily for Boris, the libertarian champion.”

Draconian powers, not used since the war, imposed the now all-too-familiar lockdown restrictions of staying at home, wearing masks, not mixing or travelling and the closure of shops and schools.

Boris’s bonhomie was replaced with disbelief. “We’re taking away the ancient, inalienable right of free-born people of the UK to go to the pub.”

If the restrictions were “very unConservative,” as one Tory peer suggested, so too was the record multi-billion borrowing and expenditure to keep the economy afloat.

Yet Boris won plaudits for the furlough scheme that saved thousands of jobs and the mass vaccination programme, which helped save thousands of lives.

Early suggestions the PM was not taking the pandemic seriously disappeared when he contracted the virus himself and for a time was fighting for his life in intensive care.

Boris struggled not only to take in the scale of the crisis but also cope with it.

Row after row ensued, over such issues as a lack of PPE, allowing the transfer of elderly patients back into care homes, not restricting incomers quickly enough, which, it was claimed, led to the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant, and the self-isolation “pingdemic”. Critics insist these underline how the PM’s handling of the Covid crisis has been “shambolic”.

U-turn after U-turn was made south of the Border, from community testing to cancelling Christmas and the contentious plan for mandatory vaccine passports for nightclubs.

“The real loss of moral authority began with Cummings and the Barnard Castle trip,” noted one senior Tory. “The public was giving Boris the benefit of the doubt but Cummings led people to believe it was one rule for them and another for the rest of us. Remarkably, they didn’t learn the lessons.”

Indeed, Matt Hancock’s breaching the social distancing rules with his amorous embrace and the PM’s ludicrous attempt to avoid self-isolation only damaged his authority further.

There were also the leaked snippets from inside the Downing Street bunker revealing deep tensions inside. After Boris ordered the second lockdown in England, he was said to have declared with exasperation: “No more f***ing lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

This was emphatically denied by No 10 but more recently it was claimed the PM resisted the second lockdown because most of those dying were above the average life expectancy, joking: “Get Covid and live longer.”

Boris, refusing to apologise, all but admitted he had used the words, telling MPs things had changed “since we were thinking in those ways”. SNP Commons leader Ian Blackford insisted the PM was “simply not fit for office”.

Hopefully, all will come out in the end when the Covid public inquiry takes places next spring under oath. It might help explain why the UK has had the worst death toll across Europe and taken the biggest economic hit.

The pandemic has consumed much of the political waveband. But not all of it. After those excruciatingly uncomfortable early pictures of Boris meeting Sturgeon on the steps of Bute House, the constitutional battle has erupted sporadically with the PM setting his face against a second independence referendum and the First Minister insisting, following the May elections, Holyrood has a democratic mandate to call one.

The PM has tried to get No 10’s act together with a new Union Directorate, a Cabinet Committee on the Union and the Internal Market Act – denounced by the Scottish Government as a “power-grab” – enabling Whitehall to bypass Edinburgh when spending money here.

But the problem for Boris in Scotland is…Boris. Whilst his approval rating south of the Border is reasonably good, it is shockingly bad north of it. Conservative colleagues privately admit he is an electoral liability in Scotland, hence his failure why he failed to show up in the run-up to the recent Holyrood poll.

Once the pandemic is over, the first skirmish in the constitutional battle is expected in the courts. “Boris is immovable on Indyref2, whatever Nicola throws at him,” a senior aide insisted.

The Tory leader did manage to campaign in England, removing another brick in Labour’s red wall in Hartlepool but losing one from the blue wall in Amersham.

Despite having been done, Brexit continues to be a stone in Boris’s shoe, all of his own making. He characteristically sought to blag his way to a deal with Brussels, telling Ulster’s unionists there would not be a customs border down the Irish Sea under the Protocol but duly signed up to one, doubtless thinking he could wriggle out of it later. However, Brussels is determined to protect the purity of the single market and is in no mood to rewrite the deal.

While the PM hoped to enhance Global Britain’s global reputation at the G7 summit in Cornwall and COP26 summit in Glasgow, his threat to break international law over Brexit and his decision to cut overseas aid cut have, say opponents, badly damaged it.

During his two years in office, the PM has also been on a personal journey of ups and downs in his personal life with a divorce, a marriage and the birth of a son, Wilfred. Boris, 57, now has six children “at least”, according to Wikipedia.

After two years of lugging the 747 of state down the tarmac, questions are bubbling up over his performance among Tory MPs over whether he will lead his party into the next election.

Like his hero Winston Churchill, Boris could find that having resolved one major issue, he is surplus to requirement. If so, he’ll just have to concentrate on earning lots of money and having lots of fun.