Political column - July 19

Chaos to the left, disaster to the right, a shambles all around... personal prospects - never better.

Theresa May, who is the actual Prime Minister, wasn't there in the House of Commons to hear it.

As Britain heads relentlessly to a Brexit no deal, as even in the unlikely event of unity in Westminster the EU will refuse to accept anything that it considers damages the "project" (such as Brexit, for instance), Boris is a man for these times.

Of course, the idea of him becoming Prime Minister is absurd. But contemporary politics is a theatre of absurdity.

A billionaire playboy is president of the United States. Labour is led by a leader in whom few of his Parliamentary colleagues have confidence. The British people voted for Brexit but the Prime Minister is a Remainer, as collectively is the House of Commons, which is supposed to be putting the people's decision into effect.

So Boris Johnson will be the next Prime Minister and David Davis, who was sitting not far away from him as he made his personal statement yesterday, will be foreign secretary.

It can be confidently predicted that either this will happen. Or something else will happen.

Before Boris got up there was speculation about whether this would be his Geoffrey Howe moment. Geoffrey Howe, you may or may not remember, was Margaret Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer who gave a devastating speech from the backbenches which seriously dented her.

It had all the more force as he was usually such a mild-mannered chap.

Boris is not such a mild-mannered chap but has more natural rhetorical gifts, mixing erudition with populism, and the classics with, well, mugwumpery and other such terms which presumably arise from the darker corners of the public school system.

The job of Prime Minister is not on offer. During PMQs Boris had sat glowering not far from Theresa May. His ears must have started burning when a fellow Tory backbencher questioned Mrs May about her meeting with a "huge ego" who had a difficulty with the truth, although it turned out he was talking about Donald Trump.

Boris had to wait for a couple of hours before his moment came. He began by recognising the "courage and resilience" of Theresa May.

There was more. He heaped praise on her vision outlined at the start of the EU negotiations at Lancaster House.

That was as good as it got. What came next was Boris as a modern-day Churchill. Since then Britain had completely surrendered. That bold vision from Lancaster House had been torn up and the white flag raised.

He didn't use those words, but that was the sentiment. He also placed a bomb under the Chequers so-called agreement which led to his resignation in the first place.

"We are volunteering for economic vassalage, not just in goods and agri foods, but we will be forced to match EU arrangements on the environment and social affairs and much else besides.

"The result of accepting the EU’s rulebooks and of our proposals for a fantastical Heath Robinson customs arrangement is we have much less scope to do free trade deals.

"If we pretend otherwise we continue to make the fatal mistake of underestimating the intelligence of the public, saying one thing to the EU about what we are doing and then saying another thing to the electorate.

"It is not too late to save Brexit. We have time in these negotiations. We have changed tack once, and we can change again."

We would not get another chance to get it right.

"It is absolute nonsense to imagine, as I fear some of my colleagues do, that we can somehow afford to make a botched treaty now and then break and reset the bone later on, because we have seen even in these talks how the supposedly provisional becomes eternal...

"We need to make one decision now before all others - and that's to believe in this country and in what it can do."

Yes, believe! Or maybe he meant be-leave.

Harking back to Theresa May's vision for Brexit outlined last year, he concluded: "If the Prime Minister can fix that vision once again before us I believe she can deliver a great Brexit for Britain with a positive, self confident approach that will unite this party, unite this House, and unite this country as well.”

And make me Prime Minister, was the unspoken payoff line.

He sat down to cheers from some of his colleagues.

Boris has planted his flag. It's going to be interesting to see who in the Tory party starts saluting it.