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When at least 98 Conservative MPs vote against their own Government, that is not a rebellion. That is a revolution. The issue is no longer certification, or “vaccine passports”. The issue

now is: can Boris Johnson carry on as Prime Minister? The answer, surely, is that he can. Indeed, he must. There is no other leader capable of uniting the Tories, let alone the country. No

other politician has a democratic mandate. No other politician has the national stature that comes with having won first a referendum and then a general election, the latter by a landslide.

No other politician commands broad support across both wings of a party that came close to tearing itself apart over Europe. No other politician has a track record of making huge inroads

into traditional Labour heartlands, from London to the Midlands, Wales and the North. No other politician has seen off serious challenges from parties to the Right of the Tories. No other

politician has the instant first name recognition otherwise reserved for celebrities. Like him or loathe him, Boris is just in a different league from the rest. That, however, is part of the

problem. Just as every French soldier, according to Napoleon, carried a marshal’s baton in their knapsack, so every Tory backbencher fantasises that he or she could be a better Prime

Minister than the incumbent. Under the most dominant leaders, such as Thatcher or Johnson, the gap between fact and fiction breeds envy and resentment. Not a few of the Tuesday rebels

harbour bitter feelings towards Boris. At the very least, they want him taken down a peg or three.   Many others, of course, genuinely believed that they were entitled to vote against the

Government “on principle”. The brand new MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, Louie French, explained to anyone who would listen that he had pledged not to support vaccine certification in his

by-election campaign earlier this month “and voted accordingly”. It may come as a surprise to him to learn that he owes his presence in the Commons, where he has yet to make a maiden speech,

not to personal pledges, but to his membership of the oldest and most successful political party in the world. Another rebel, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, delivered a warning to the Prime

Minister: either he “consults the [parliamentary] party more”, or the Tories would fail to reunite and lose the next election. Another, Marcus Fysh, committed the ultimate idiocy of bringing

Hitler’s Germany into the debate, prompting the Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, to remind Tory backbenchers that ministers were not actually Nazis. (Nor, for that matter, is the new

German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat who supports mandatory vaccination.)   What planet are these Sir Bufton-Tuftons living on? Do they seriously expect to be given a veto over

every twist and turn of the battle against Covid? Or do they merely have a lemming-like suicide wish? For if there is one rule of political survival, it is that the public will not vote for

a divided party. Holding a sword of Damocles over the Prime Minister when he is already embattled, openly talking up the threat of a no-confidence vote, grandstanding in the midst of a

pandemic, are the actions of a party inebriated with a sense of entitlement to office. Unless the Conservatives can recover their self-discipline, the electorate will make short work of

them.   As it happens, there is a by-election this week in North Shropshire. If, as the polls suggest, it was balanced on a knife-edge before Tuesday’s rebellion, then it is now as good as

lost. The Lib Dems will be cockahoop, Labour will claim credit for keeping up the pressure over a series of unforced errors by Downing Street, but the main fault will lie with a Tory party

that has talked itself into the notion that by requiring a modest level of certification for a limited number of venues and events, Britain is embarking on what Dame Andrea Leadsom called a

“slippery slope down which I do want to slip”. A large majority of the public supports the package of measures that the rebels tried in vain to sabotage. Most people have now got the message

that the nation now finds itself in the oncoming path of a tidal wave of Covid unleashed by the Omicron variant. They also understand that those who stubbornly refuse to be vaccinated pose

a threat to everyone else, both because they are more likely to be infectious and by unnecessarily risking hospitalisation at a time when the NHS is struggling. The 98 MPs who defied their

party whip were also defying public opinion, which would probably like ministers to go further in nudging the reluctant, the anxious and the gullible vaccine refuseniks to get the jab. Of

the five million who have yet to be vaccinated at all, only a minority are stubborn antivaxers. The rest are open to persuasion. The Government has so far failed to mount a full-scale public

information campaign, spearheaded by Dame Kate Bingham (who led the original vaccination programme) and fronted by someone like Sir Elton John, as I proposed here last month. But it is not

too late to pull out all the stops. After all, what is the excuse for this self-indulgent display of disloyalty? Since when was being asked to produce a Covid pass or a negative lateral flow

test such a huge deal as to justify bringing down a Prime Minister? Maybe some have not yet grasped the rationale for not putting others at risk of a life-threatening illness, but most

people now consider such precautions before social occasions as no more than good manners. As for the fear that these restrictions may be extended to, say, pubs and restaurants: there is

nothing to stop that happening anyway. Other countries have already gone much further. In New York, for example, all public and most large private employers now require vaccination as a

condition of employment. There, the unvaccinated are made to feel like pariahs. Our best hope of rendering compulsion unnecessary is to encourage those who can be persuaded to get jabbed,

before the majority demands that they be ostracised. Finally, what of Sir Keir Starmer’s suggestion that Boris Johnson “needs to ask himself the question whether he has the authority to lead

this country through this pandemic”? Given that the only recent Tory leader to have faced a rebellion on this scale was Theresa May, it is a fair question. But Mrs May was brought down

because she had failed to “get Brexit done”, as she had been elected to do. The loss of her majority in Parliament merely reflected the country’s loss of faith in her ability to keep her

promise. There is simply no comparison with the relatively minor issue of Covid certification. Another comparison might be the famous Norway debate in 1940, when about 100 Tory MPs either

rebelled or abstained. On that occasion the Government still had a majority, but such a show of defiance at a time when the war was going badly was enough to induce Neville Chamberlain to

resign. One big difference between now and then was that a far better wartime leader was waiting in the wings: Winston Churchill. There is no such statesmanlike figure now available. If Sir

Keir seriously believes, as he says, that Boris Johnson is “the worst possible leader at the worst possible time”, then he should have the gumption to table a no confidence motion in the

House. That would be a moment of truth for those Tory rebels who are willing to wound but afraid to strike the Prime Minister.   For Boris Johnson himself, this is a bad week that is

probably about to get worse. With a newborn baby and a toddler, he is presumably getting little rest. Christmas cannot come too soon for him, but it will offer only a brief respite. If

reports of the dire warnings that Chris Whitty has been giving the Cabinet are correct, then by the New Year Covid will be back with a vengeance. But the politics of pandemic have

wrongfooted everyone before. If events prove him right, this week may be the nadir of the PM’s fortunes. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering

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