Political column – July 27

Come on, we all know it. It's just a matter of time before he blows up.

In Downing Street, nervous staff have been packing away the best china and surreptitiously putting wire mesh on the paintings on the grand staircase.

In media circles there is an unwritten game, a challenge to be the first to dig a great Boris bear pit and then entice him in. It is not going to be too difficult. All you have to do is give Boris the microphone and encourage him to keep talking. Or, better still, record him talking when he doesn't know or care that he's being recorded.

The game is already rigged against Boris in the media and within Parliament. The concept that Boris is a gaffe-prone liar is the default setting. How his political accusers can get away with adopting for themselves the mantle of truth and consistency is a bit of a mystery, but they do.

He will be treated as a blond in Number 10.

Enjoy the ride, and get ready for some smashed plates. This could prove a brief and eventful premiership. Brief, not necessarily because of something Boris does wrong. Now that he has entered Downing Street he is going to be difficult to remove. Being Prime Minister does have significant advantages over being a Cabinet minister. Whatever clanger he drops, Boris is hardly going to sack himself, is he?

No, it may be brief because he chooses it to be brief, because the clock is ticking in another way.

The next couple of months or so are a window of opportunity for Boris. At the time of writing, he hasn't tripped up horribly. Yet a huge number of tripping hazards lie ahead.

He has promised to deliver Brexit by October 31, do or die, no ifs or buts.

His political enemies are open about their determination to thwart him. And we're not just talking about the likes of Philip Hammond and Sir Alan Duncan.

Contrary to what you may have read, Labour's policy on Brexit has been a model of clarity for three years. It is to force a general election, and to perform whatever handstands on Brexit that it takes to force a general election.

Its opposition to a "Tory Brexit" is just code for being against anything that any Conservative administration might agree.

The policy of the Liberal Democrats is to stop Brexit at any cost. The policy of the Scottish Myopics is to stop Brexit at any cost.

The policy of some Tory MPs is to stop a no deal Brexit at any cost, and the only deal that has ever been on the table has been repeatedly voted down by huge margins in the Commons.

Under the current arithmetic, Parliament is not the solution. It is the problem.

You know all that. And if you know all that, you'll also know that even with all Boris' bluster, and self-styled can-do spirit, he is not going to be able to dig MPs out of their trenches and change their minds.

Boris has made a promise, and it's a promise that he can't deliver. Unless...

It's all about timing. For a brief moment he's on the crest of a wave. Fairly or not, the expectation is that he will soon crash upon the rocks.

Labour wants a general election but in its current parlous state it is in no state to fight one.

If Boris could call a general election and get an overall majority, he would be in dreamland.

And if he got the timing right, he could even slip Brexit past the finish line through prorogation by stealth, through the dissolution of Parliament which comes with calling a general election (although I suspect one or two MPs might notice).

Of course, only a bighead would dare to call a general election. It's a risky business. Look what happened to Theresa May.

But unlike her, Boris is a proven campaigner. And then there's the Boris bounce effect, which will diminish by the day.

Boris has one shot at this. The longer he delays, the more likely it is that that one shot will go straight into his foot.

............

Tom Watson says it was not his role to judge whether "Nick" was being truthful.

That sounds a bit like Tony Blair's defence on Iraq. Blair swallowed the intelligence assessments without serious question. And there was more to it than that – to do so suited Blair's agenda.

Similarly, the allegations of the fantasist "Nick" neatly dovetailed with Tom Watson's crusade as paedo-hunter-in-chief which pre-programmed him to be receptive to the idea that there was a child abuse ring at the heart of the establishment.

He urged victims to come forward as, he said, the response of police to "Nick's" allegations showed that police would believe them.

Tom Watson played a leading part in creating a climate in which innocent men had their lives destroyed. He played the tune, and the police danced to it.

"Nick" is Watson's Iraq.

..............

Some outlets have reported that Boris Johnson committed his first Prime Ministerial gaffe during his audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Rather than him dropping a clanger by disclosing details of their conversation, I would suggest he committed a far worse crime. He didn't take his shoes off when walking on her carpet.

Take a look at the carpet on the photos and you will see that it is a horrible drab brown affair.

It seems the Queen herself does not take off her shoes when walking on it. But it's her carpet.

One of those carpet cleaners you can hire down the supermarket would bring it up a treat. Failing that, I have another suggestion. I have been watching Drew and Scott on one of those transatlantic house improvement shows, and it seems that over the other side of the pond hardly anybody has carpets at all.

So, if you're not going to clean it, take it up.