Jackdaw,
This is the New Statesman, so you may wish to disagree with it...
// the parliamentary Conservative party, where a sizable chunk of MPs believe that Johnson is a winner but carry grave reservations about his ability to be Prime Minister. Those fears range from a belief he would be lazy and ineffective to people who think he is not a fit and proper person. One Conservative MP, who is nearer the beginning of their career than the end, told me they would “retire” rather than serve in a Johnson-led government.
Until relatively recently, it was a well-sourced commonplace wisdom at Westminster that the doubts that Conservative MPs have about Johnson’s fitness to hold office would mean that he would never gain the support necessary to become the party’s leader. //