After a long period in office, it’s natural for any political party to lose their zeal for governing. As problems mount up, loyalties fray as the stench of sleaze begins to reek. In hushed whispers, MPs begin to talk of a ‘spell in the wilderness’ as opposition looks increasingly attractive compared to the burdens of statesmanship.

Some Tories in Westminster appear to be flirting with such sentiments now, judging from the lackluster enthusiasm which the current contest seems to inspire. After a dozen years in office, the thinking goes, could now be the time for a ‘reset’? A brief respite on the other side of the Commons, time for a Lab-led cabal to tear itself apart before a renewed, rejuvenated and above all, SOUND, Tory government takes power once more.

Yet a word of warning for those toying with such Lemming-like notions. The last time the Tories indulged in such whims, they went down to a historic landslide and didn’t come back for 13 years. And few know that better than the man most responsible for their current predicament: Boris Johnson. Back in the mid-1990s he watched in despair as his party tore itself apart, as he wrote in one column decrying the ‘kamikaze squad.’

Then at the Telegraph, Johnson wrote in March 1995 of ‘a group of Tories who have meditated profoundly on the future of Conservatism. In the cynical slogan of Lenin, they have concluded that “the worse the better”, that there is nothing for it but to adopt a stance of revolutionary defeatism.’ These ‘political suicide-bombers’ had surveyed ‘the inseparability of Tory and Labour policy on everything’ and ‘the emptiness’ of the government’s programme and concluded ‘the time has come to die.’

Patrolling the corridors of Westminster, the future PM encountered at that time Eurosceptics ‘with safe seats, who fantasise about a collective act of Tory suicide – on the understanding, of course, that they, as individuals, will be spared.’ Shades of the ERG today perhaps? Naturally such men and women didn’t want to lose: ‘they would rather see the party undergo moral and intellectual catharsis without the inconvenience of giving Labour the keys to Downing Street.’

But given the impossibility of installing ‘a man of sufficient ideological rigour now’ their best bet was ‘to hope for the blood-letting that will follow an election defeat.’ Therefore there would be a ‘rediscovery of Principle with a capital P, of ‘True Conservatism’ with ‘vicious’ spending cuts, a free trade Europe and ‘a serious policy’ on law and order. Yet as Johnson himself concluded:

You might feel it odd that some Tories are defeatist that they are plotting about Opposition, when the election could be anything up to to years away. You might think it rum, in particular, that right-wing Tories could wish the economy to be passed into the hands of socialists, with all that means for policy on tax, spending and Europe. You might think that. Or perhaps it is just me. Perhaps the Kamikaze Tories have answers to these questions as they narrow their eyes and stare at he rising sun of Michael Portillo. It would be reassuring, though, to hear those answers.

For those Tories mulling over the wisdom of opposition, food for thought, perhaps.