Anti-Johnson MPs - having blown their chance to oust him in a confidence vote - are now agitating for cabinet colleagues to wield the knife, but one MP says 'they don't have the nerve'.
But this is not just a crisis of leadership for the prime minister, it is potentially a wider crisis for the Conservative Party.
By-elections are of course very different beasts to general elections, but I make the point to illustrate why Mr Johnson's MPs will be feeling very anxious. Election guru Professor John Curtice put the results into context, pointing out that the recent by-election results - losing four out of five contests - were the party's"worst run of by-election results since the Tories first returned to power in 2010".
The entire party - cabinet ministers, MPs, members, staffers, volunteers - will be inevitability asking themselves whether Mr Johnson remains the right leader, whether these losses are a blip linked to economic circumstances or something more profound.And that brings us to the inevitable question, again, about his continued leadership of the country and the Conservative Party as prime minister.
But 4,000 miles away from Rwanda, a cabinet minister, a former Conservative leader Lord Howard and his MPs are again questioning his suitability for the role.
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Tories lose two seats in by-election blows to Boris JohnsonLabour retakes Wakefield and the once-safe seat of Tiverton and Honiton goes to the Lib Dems.
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Boris Johnson's by-election losses will seep like poison slowly into the Tory bloodstreamStatistics are impossible to ignore. Wakefield is Labour's first by-election victory since 2012. The Lib Dems' win in Tiverton and Honiton - an almost 30% swing away from the Tories - is the largest percentage loss for the Tories at any by-election, and one of the largest since the war.
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