The final Tory showdown is going to be nothing but impossible promises and wish fulfilment

None of the candidates had the answer to the question during the parliamentary stage of the leadership contest. Now, the shortlist of two will spend the next four weeks not answering the question in the Conservative Party members’ stage.

Neither Boris Johnson nor Jeremy Hunt have a response to the salient issue: how would you, as prime minister, get us out of the European Union?

We are likely to leave only if Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has had enough and wants us out. That is what he said in March but it turned out that it wasn’t what he meant. The same will probably happen in October.

In the end, the EU wants to keep all of Europe united. It respects our decision to leave, naturally, but, if we can’t organise ourselves to do it, it will be reluctant to make the final decision for us. So, how, then, do Johnson and Hunt plan to get us out?

To start with, their positions are similar: they say the prospect of a no-deal exit will force the EU to accept changes to the backstop agreement, which guarantees an open border in Ireland.

The backstop is endlessly bandied about in Westminster argument without explanation, so it is worth reminding ourselves what the problem with it is – namely that the EU keeps an indefinite veto over changes to it. That means that if, after Brexit, a magic technology is found to do away with the need for border checks, the EU has to agree that it works. If the EU doesn’t agree, the UK has to stay in a customs union and Northern Ireland has to stay in parts of the EU single market.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me, but then I’m not a Tory Brexiteer who would rather remain in the EU and complain about it than accept a compromise. Nor am I a member of the Democratic Unionist Party who would rather remain in the EU than accept any extra checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

Neither Johnson nor Hunt is likely to be able to change the backstop. Theresa May couldn’t change it even when a no-deal exit seemed possible, even likely. As Rory Stewart repeatedly pointed out, the threat of a no-deal Brexit is not credible because parliament will not allow it. But now Stewart has been eliminated from the contest, so the final stage of the campaign can be conducted entirely on impossible promises and wish fulfilment.

Thus Johnson says “we’ve got to get out” on 31 October, or else the Tory party will “kick the bucket”, only the second part of which is right. While Hunt, with a more realistic idea of the timetable for negotiating a new deal, says that if an agreement were in sight he would be prepared to extend the deadline a bit.

But neither of them has a plan for leaving that would be agreed by both the EU and the House of Commons. Whichever of them becomes prime minister would therefore be required by parliament to seek an extension.

Then the question is which is least unappealing – a new referendum, an early election, or letting the clock run down to the destruction of the Tory party at the end of the parliament in 2022?

Johnson will almost certainly win the leadership election because he wanted to leave in 2016, and so it is reasonable to assume that he still wants to do so more than Hunt, who thought we should stay. But wanting to leave is not a plan.