I am willing to accept that the Tory vote collapse was at least partially exacerbated due to the forced removal of Johnson (however culpable Sunak was for it). The Tory gutter rags were enthusiastic Boris backers and, like Pete (and Nadine Dorries) got sucked too much into his cult of personality. When he was gone I just don't think they were that willing to work with any new No 10 team at all, which would have been fatal when it came to getting messages out ahead of the election. Labour pretty much had a free run in setting the narrative and Sunak's weak jibes were never really amplified by their usual client press (and in fact some of them were borderline hostile to him and by extension the party).
My own take is that Johnson probably wouldn't have won the 2024 election if he'd survived Pincher (I expect some fresh scandals would have occured regardless) but he would at least have had the usual suspects onside for campaigning. The biggest question is probably what Farage would have done if Johnson was still in No. 10 - he was making enough noises about 'Boris Brexit Betrayal' so could have still been a spoiler vote. We'll never know.
But there's no real use claiming & counterclaiming one way or the other what would have happened if he'd survived Pincher as you'd have a full 2 years plus (no way Johnson calls an early election if the polls are against him) of politics playing out differently and there's precisely zero ways to substantiate an opinion.
