Boris Johnson has so dominated politics for the past few years that it is hard to imagine things without him. His premiership, though relatively brief, has been both eventful and consequential. With him in Downing Street, there was a constant – and exhausting – sense of drama, with frequent cast changes and plot twists. But next week Johnson’s run as Prime Minister will come to an end.

Of course, he will not disappear entirely. There will be speeches and memoirs and his comments are bound to attract attention, which will make his successor nervous. Johnson, as previous Tory leaders will attest, knows how to disrupt the news agenda. Already he is trying out ways to avoid answering the question of whether he thinks a comeback is possible or not.

What is certain is that it won’t take much for some of his loyalists to start talking about the Tory king over the water. What is also worrying for whoever succeeds him is that polls suggest Tory members regret his departure. The by-election losses in formerly safe Conservative seats and the broader collapse in trust appear to have been forgotten.

All this means it won’t take much to get people speculating about a return to frontline politics for him. Even the more level–headed of those in his circle regard a comeback as unlikely but not impossible. (Of course, there is a massive obstacle to this: by the end the Conservative parliamentary party had so lost faith in Johnson that the outcome of a second no-confidence ballot was regarded as a foregone conclusion.)

But however many column inches are still devoted to him, Johnson will no longer be PM. His absence will reshape the political landscape because his presence defined it.

In the final months of Johnson’s premiership, as the odds that he would not survive until the next election grew, Labour tried to broaden its attack from him to the Tories collectively. At PMQs Keir Starmer attempted to portray Tory MPs as Johnson’s enablers. But however hard he tried, Starmer’s attacks always inevitably ended up being more about Johnson than about the party he led.

In normal circumstances this would pose a problem for Labour strategists: they would find their guns trailed on an opponent who was no longer there. But these are not normal times.

The lengthy Tory leadership contest has given Labour an opportunity to try to set the terms of debate before the new incumbent has got their feet under the desk. The party has tried to do this with its proposal to simply freeze energy prices. There are many flaws with this policy – not least that it is horrendously expensive, especially since energy prices are unlikely to return to ‘normal’ for quite some time – but it is clear and easy to understand. Labour also says the freeze would be paid for, in part, by extending and backdating the windfall tax on oil and gas companies. This is astute politics. How-ever much the Tory party might not like windfall taxes, the public – and even a majority of Tory voters – are in favour of them. The pragmatic case is also strong: these firms are making massive profits, not because of any innovation on their part, but because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s weaponisation of energy has sent prices soaring.

In the May local elections, Labour successfully used a windfall tax as a dividing line with the Tories. The government subsequently introduced one. But in the leadership campaign Liz Truss has made her dislike of windfall taxes clear and she is adamant that she won’t introduce another one. (Kwasi Kwarteng, who is tipped to become her chancellor if she wins, was also against the windfall tax before it was introduced, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is also likely to feature in her government, tried to get Johnson to drop the tax as one of his last acts in No. 10.) But if energy producers continue to make huge profits while embarking on share buybacks, it will be increasingly hard to argue against a windfall tax.

It is often said that Starmer is not Tony Blair and that he hasn’t yet won the public’s trust. Both of these things are true. But in British politics, governments tend to lose elections rather than oppositions winning them. If the new prime minister’s response to the slew of interconnected crises is not pitch-perfect, Labour will be on course to deny the Tories a majority at the next election.

If Johnson had stayed in office, it is the Liberal Democrats who would have benefited most. Their recent progress in by-elections had been based heavily on their campaigns against him. The extent to which he polarised politics helped them: thanks to tactical voting, in two of their recent by-election victories they went from third place to taking the seat. Now Johnson is leaving, the Lib Dems will need to find a new rallying cry.

Another party that enjoyed the polarising effect Johnson had on politics was the Scottish National party. For them, he was the perfect bogeyman; Nicola Sturgeon relished having him as an opponent. (Though by the end of his time in office, Johnson had worked out how to deny the SNP the fights that they so crave.)

The SNP’s case for a second independence referendum will reach the UK supreme court this autumn. However, the timing of this push – in the middle of an economic crisis – will make it that much easier for Johnson’s successor to declare that now is not the time for politicians to be obsessing about constitutional questions.

British politics without Johnson will be different but just as unpredictable. The new prime minister can lose, but not win, the next election in their first 100 days in the job. The intensity of politics will not diminish with Johnson’s departure.