DAN WOOTTON: If Boris wants to survive he must put an end to green taxes, SAGE, Downing Street incompetents and Carrie's never-ending chaos

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I may be a surprising ally for the Prime Minister who today sits forlornly on political death row awaiting execution by his understandably apoplectic colleagues.

After initially backing buccaneering Boris Johnson 100 per cent over Brexit, my faith has been more than a little shaken over the past two years when our seemingly lobotomised leader turned his back on his libertarian roots, plunged us into economy destroying Covid lockdown after lockdown, and then morphed the Conservatives into a big state, high tax party without seeking a mandate from anyone.

I'm as furious as you about his lockdown boozing when I remained trapped alone in my home for months on end, with no friends or family for support, and my aunt Celia died alone in a care home with no loved ones by her side.

The Covid rules he forced us to live through – at threat of arrest and public shaming, remember – were not only inhumane, but they were also impossible for any sane human being to follow.

And as I've said since April 2020, the damage from lockdowns over the next few years will prove to be far more devastating than Covid-19 itself – unless the forthcoming official inquiry proves to be the whitewash many of us suspect it will be.

Boris lost touch with the hardworking folk he had pledged to represent. His ambitious wife Carrie (both pictured) fancied herself as some sort of British Hillary Clinton

Boris lost touch with the hardworking folk he had pledged to represent, those of us completely fed up with the establishment blob that had spent the prior three years attempting to overturn the biggest democratic vote in our history.

We believed he would be different because that's what he promised us.

It's a tragedy that Boris found himself completely captured by the political, media and scientific establishment, at a time we needed him to stand up to them more than ever.

There are many reasons for this, none of them acceptable.

Boris was terrified of Covid after being admitted to hospital with the virus at a time when the Wuhan strain was at full-strength (I had it then too and it certainly wasn't pleasant). 

But rather than shutting down the country for two years, he should have focussed on losing weight and protecting the vulnerable.

His ambitious wife Carrie fancied herself as some sort of British Hillary Clinton – the power behind the throne, shaping Boris in her metropolitan image. 

But she should have stuck to focussing on the wallpaper after proving herself to be a two-bit political operator, completely out of touch with the issues facing ordinary people, and more interested in giving her equally hopeless friends high powered jobs.

However, this week I have become convinced now is not the time for Boris (pictured with Chris Whitty and Sir Patrik Vallance) to go, both for the sake of the country and his faltering party

And, most depressingly, following the departure of his evil Svengali Dominic Cummings, Boris began to believe that he should bow down to the BBC.

Such an approach seemed like a good idea when he needed them to parrot his Covid propaganda and terrify the population into cowering into their homes, but it has turned out to be a fatal error, as the Beeb now does all it can to force him into an early retirement.

No political superstar has done more to destroy an unassailable 80-seat majority and strong poll ratings than Boris Johnson.

However, this week I have become increasingly convinced now is not the time for Boris to go, both for the sake of the country and his faltering party.

Regardless of our fury, we must be clear that those attempting to lead Boris to the slaughterhouse are going to increase the chances of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Do I think Boris will be leader at the next election? It's highly unlikely.

But we cannot let a febrile and toxic Twitter-obsessed culture to allow a few opinion pollsters – widely discredited after their total failure to predict Brexit, Trump and the collapse of the Red Wall – to bring down an elected Prime Minister.

Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair recovered from similar mid-term slumps to go on and win the next general election.

At the very least, Tory MPs must wait until after the May local elections, where voters will have a chance to make any displeasure clear at the ballot box.

As the UK emerges from two years of Covid and lockdown hell, with our economy outperforming the rest of the G7, now is not the moment for political turmoil.

Besides, it's up to Boris to lead us out of this hellfire by torpedoing Covid restrictions once and for all, ensuring there will never be a U-turn, and then tackling the cost of living crisis.

He took us into this thing and it is his responsibility to get us out of it.

Leaving this complete s***show with a new Tory Prime Minister at this very moment damns them to instant failure, which the BBC and Labour are well aware of.

Things Boris (pictured visiting the Moray Offshore Windfarm East) can – and must – do if he has any hope of saving his premiership include axing green levies on energy bills

As much as I like and respect the frontrunners Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss – and believe both could be excellent leaders of the UK – this is not the time for them to take charge of the train set.

Boris must man up, take back control and prove he can deliver his promises now he has finally stopped chronically overreacting to Covid.

It's not going to be easy, though, and, if he has any hope, the old Bojo fighting spirit needs to return.

Here are ten things Boris can – and must – do if he has any hope of saving his premiership beyond the release of the Sue Gray PartyGate inquiry.

1: Ban Carrie from all political operations

Boris, your wife must be your wife and nothing more. Her allies claimed she was a smooth operator, but if that were the case then surely she would have told you to ban the Downing Street parties during lockdown in the first place. 

Instead, she attended with you. She's also caused chaos and carnage with her obsession with beating Cummings, an unseemly bloke who will fight to the death over a minor grudge. 

Keep your personal and professional life separate from now on. We voted for you, not her. 

She should either find her own (non-political) career or have the guts to stand for office so she can be held to account like any other politician.

2: Sack SAGE

Instead of bestowing a knighthood on Christopher Whitty, you should be firing his ass and the rest of the hysterics on SAGE who have got this pandemic wrong from the start. 

I don't mean to be unkind to the professor and his chums, who have worked hard, but Omicron was the final straw. 

Whitty said everything we know about Omicron was bad and encouraged you to lock us down again with warnings of up to 6,000 deaths a day, when the data and evidence out of South Africa showed the exact opposite. 

Get rid of them all and hire the likes of Professor Carl Heneghan and Professor Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University, who have made far more correct calls over the past two years.

He must beg the brilliant former Brexit Secretary Lord David Frost (pictured), who quit over Plan BS, to come back as a new Number 10 enforcer

3: Repeal the Coronavirus Act now

There is simply no excuse for any government to maintain such extraordinary and draconian controls on our life for an endemic virus like the flu which we need to learn to live with long-term.

4: Scrap the National Insurance increase due for April

It's unbelievable that in the midst of the biggest cost of living crisis most of us can remember, you are proposing such a manifesto-busting tax hike. It has to go.

5: Abolish the BBC licence fee this year, don't wait until 2027

Boris, your voters have had it with the poll tax to pay for the British Bashing Corporation. 

A subscription model is now the only way forward – and it will make the Beeb accountable to its audience, not the quinoa munching and champagne quaffing London liberal dinner party elite.

6: Cut your useless Downing Street senior team and bring in some big guns to take control of your shoddy operation

Beg the brilliant former Brexit Secretary Lord David Frost, who quit over Plan BS, to come back as a new Number 10 enforcer. 

Dan Wootton

You need someone with his fortitude to shake-up an operation which lost its moral compass over the course of the pandemic.

7: Stop the boats, stop the boats, stop the bloody boats

No issue infuriates your base more than the migrant crisis on the Channel. You have proposed various solutions, but bugger all has been achieved in practice. 

With warnings of over 60,000 illegal arrivals on small boats this year alone that will no longer stand. 

Have the balls to sort it, no matter the outcry from lefties who will never vote for you anyway. Stopping even counting the daily arrivals will not solve the problem.

8: Axe green levies on energy bills

It's a moral outrage they make up over 20 per cent of what we all pay for electricity. 

You may have got away with it when the costs remained relatively low overall, but the game is up.

9: Axe VAT on energy bills

This was a fundamental Brexit promise, Boris. You extolled the virtue of being able to do this the moment we were free of the EU shackles. 

There's no excuse to delay another moment.

10: Announce your plan to cut income tax before the next election

We hear the Chancellor is working on doing just that, but we need to KNOW it's going to happen. 

If we wanted to become a high tax society, pandemic or no pandemic, we would have voted for Labour.

Good luck and Godspeed Boris, you're going to need it.