Unbelievably the Tories are about to make Boris their leader

Three years ago, the minority of Tory MPs who argued in favour of leaving the European Union were convinced that the UK would be offered, and would accept, a sensible exit based on straightforward, tariff-free access to the Single Market and a recognition that Britain – as the world’s fifth-largest economy and sixth-strongest military power – would continue to be Europe’s trusted friend and partner.

Ukip wouldn’t like it, they said. Nigel Farage would huff and puff. But that didn’t matter. They were no more than useful idiots.

And then the result came in – a wafer-thin victory for Leave. Er … hurrah! Sort of.  David Cameron slung his hook and a new government was handed the conch. What mattered now, to this same minority of Conservatives, was that Theresa May and David Davis should move quickly – chop chop – to get us the Brexit of their dreams while Liam Fox secured trade deals with the 167 countries that existed outside of Europe, including the US and China, that would transform Britain’s prospects and turn us into world-beaters.

Not everyone agreed, of course,­ for let us remember, even after the disastrous 2017 general election a majority of Tory MPs were still Remainers at heart. There were some who argued that, given the result, the best outcome would be British membership of the European Economic Area, which would allow the UK to disengage from the various EU institutions, as well as the common agricultural and fisheries policies, while still enjoying unrestricted access to the Single Market and freeing Fox to pursue his goal of buccaneering Britain.

On the margins, there were advocates for the Norway option and the Swiss option. There were even those – surprisingly numerous – who believed the Irish border question could be resolved with little more than a smartphone app. Outside of the ERG group, lodged as it is in the mindset of Joseph Chamberlain, what most Tories seemed to want was a straightforward settlement between two sets of grown-ups that both respected the result of the referendum and changed as little as possible on the ground, especially in Dover and Calais.

So how did that work out? Mrs May dug in and did her best, producing a draft withdrawal agreement that gave sensible Leavers most of what they wanted, only for more than a hundred Tory rebels to vote it down as if it were the instrument of surrender presented to the Nazis on Lüneberg Heath.

Nor did they relent in the weeks that followed. Today, with Theresa May bidding us a tearful farewell as she retreats into the temporary anonymity of Downing Street, the Tories haven’t a clue how to proceed. In office but not in power should have been the slogan pinned to the door of the Cabinet Room, within which each of the places reserved for ministers should have been occupied by a tub of lard.

Defeating their own government is what the Tories do best these days. They certainly don’t govern the country, still less represent it either at home or abroad.

And still no end in sight As the curtain obstinately fails to fall on their outlandish out-of-season pantomime, step forward the chief villain of the piece, desperately trying to recast himself as the hero: Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson.

I find it astonishing that there may be an actual majority of Tory MPs out there who are now willing to endorse Boris as prime minister. They know the man. They know what a buffoon he is. They know that the only issue he takes seriously is himself. What is it about him that so impresses them? Is it his ebullience, his bulk – his hair? Is it that middle-aged matrons swoon when he enters the room? Is it his command of schoolboy Latin? Or is it just that they want to believe his bullshit because it is the only fuel the party has left to burn?

Even moderate MPs are turning to Boris. They appear to have convinced themselves that the only man who can rescue them from the situation in which they find themselves as a result of their own ineptitude is the fat owl who when mayor of London achieved nothing, regularly failed to turn up for meetings, and as foreign secretary turned one of the great offices of state into an international laughing stock.

Surely, you might think, the fact that Donald Trump is backing Johnson to be President would be enough to persuade any respectable Tory to look elsewhere as a matter of some urgency. But no. Judgment in the post-Brexit era is seen as an unaffordable luxury. What matters is expediency, and if that means levering the wrong man into the wrong job at the wrong time – Bernard Manning if Manning had gone to Eton – so be it.

Just this week, having suggested to journalists in London that American insurance companies were in line to win juicy NHS contracts once Brexit was out of the way, Donald Trump went on to tell Leo Varadkar in Dublin that a wall between north and south in Ireland was the best way forward for his country. His ignorance and arrogance know no bounds.  But the President – a man so preposterously vain that he cannot accept the fact of his own baldness – is the Leader of the Free World, and as far as a growing number of Tories are concerned, if he says Boris is the best man for the job, who are they to disagree?

At least Johnson would get us a good trade deal with the US, the De Pfellel faction assures us. Does anyone really believe that? And how would the Chinese feel about giving the Brits imperial preference knowing that the occupant of 10 Downing Street is a pal of Donald Trump’s?

At the root of the groundswell of support for the Honourable member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (majority 5,034) is the determination of Tories to hold on to power for ever and ever, no matter what. Their self-belief against all the evidence is increasingly akin to belief in the divine right of kings. They claim they are being patriotic by doing anything and everything to prevent Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell from winning the next election, as if a left-wing Labour government, voted in by the people, would be the final straw in the decline of democracy – a process they themselves are in fact hastening by hanging on to power long after they lost the trust of the electorate.

Tories who once urged moderation now claim that they are duty-bound to secure a hard or No Deal Brexit, even, some say, at the expense of bypassing the Commons. Never mind that most of them voted Remain. Never mind that Labour won the Peterborough by-election. Never mind that the whole point of the referendum was to restore the sovereignty of Parliament.

If they are so sure they are right about the future direction of the United Kingdom, let the Conservatives put their case to the people. Never mind a second referendum. Forget Boris. It’s time for a general election.