Boris Johnson’s chaotic rule begins in less than two days – and there’s nothing in the world that will soften the blow

Have you finalised the details of your “Boris Johnson Enters 10 Downing Street” drinking game yet?

I hate to hurry you, but there are less than 48 hours before the formal announcement, and the week ahead will be absolutely the last week in peacetime history to attempt to live through sober.

For any stragglers who haven’t formulated the rules yet, here’s a suggestion to get you going. Knock back a shot every time you encounter the phrase “cabinet of all the talents” – and make it a treble if it appears to be free of scathingly ironic intent.

While the early speculation about his appointments is fine as far as it goes, fans of affirmative action such as Johnson himself will feel it doesn’t go quite far enough.

Even so, it is hugely reassuring to read that Johnson might make David Davis his chancellor. Today’s news that Philip Hammond will resign on Wednesday was a visceral shock, coming as it did the day after he posed outside 11 Downing Street with his suitcases. But once the ague fades, it will be obvious that replacing him with Davis would be a masterstroke of inclusivity.

Until now, the post of chancellor has been monopolised by an elite. Its holders have exclusively been people (technically, men) of at least average intellect.

In the brave new world Johnson will start terraforming on Tuesday, the dominion of the elites will be smashed. Johnson no doubt said something to that effect, probably in Etruscan, to his campaign team when last they met in the £9m London town house owned by a Rupert Murdoch Sky executive.

There could be no more effective way of pile-driving that home than handing the Treasury to Davis. Actually, that’s not entirely true, and we’ll come to Iain Duncan Smith in a while. But Davis’s unique strength is that he represents not one but two demographic groups whom prime ministers have scandalously overlooked.

He is the champion of the tragically befuddled, his answer to any question half a degree harder than “Now then, love, can you tell me your name?” being to grin, giggle and mumble a mantra about the EU27 “folding like a cheap pack of cards when the pressure’s on” in the style of a lobotomised Appalachian Trumpian struggling with a quantum gravity paradox that beat the hell out of Stephen Hawking.

He is also the poster boy for the terminally indolent, having notched an aggregated two hours of negotiating with Michel Barnier during his two years as Brexit secretary. Basic maths is the last skill required of a chancellor on the cusp of a Richter 11 economic earthquake. So if that calculation is beyond his range, it equates to one hour per year.

Rumour suggests Davis won’t be Johnson’s only inspired hire. He is also considering Priti Patel for home secretary.

Another incoming PM might be tempted to make Patel, who was sacked from the Foreign Office for having secret meetings with the Israelis and lying about it, his foreign secretary.

That would go a step beyond what his hero across the Atlantic might know as sending her home, or offering definitive proof that the letterbox and bank robber Muslim-baiting of old really was nothing more sinister than the very jolliest of japes.

At this marginally tense moment in relations, it would reassure the Iranians that the British government is a bastion of neutrality in that incendiary region.

Yet given Johnson’s stellar track record so far as dealing with Tehran, he may understandably prefer to leave Jeremy Hunt in place as a figurehead, and spearhead the crisis management himself.

So prepare to down a pint with a tequila chaser on Wednesday evening, when our new premier is expected to make an off the cuff remark about the British-flagged tanker really being a floating school for anti-Ayatollah investigative journalists.

And now, because it can be delayed no longer, to the anticipated appointment as chief whip of the dunce’s dunce. Who could be better qualified to lecture Tory MPs about the paramount need for loyalty and unity than Duncan Smith, the leader of the rebellion against John Major?

With the leadership of the rebel alliance passing to Hammond (may the force be strong with this one), the comebacks of Davis and IDS would make a powerful statement about inclusivity.

But lest the “You don’t need to be a dummy to work here… but it helps” messaging still isn’t plain enough, Johnson is believed to be stretching his talent hunt beyond Westminster.

What purports to be leaked tape from the Sky exec’s sitting room records Johnson practising an impromptu announcement, which campaign insiders anticipate him making, exclusively to Sky News, on Thursday morning.

“My friends, the last great Elizabethan age had a holder of the title in a pivotal position, and this one deserves no less,” he can be heard muttering.

“So I am beside myself with joy to announce the ennoblement, and appointment as defence secretary in the Lords with immediate effect, of Joey, Earl of Essex.

“With Su Pollard, Marchioness of Maplins, also joining the government as Brexit secretary, this truly will be [fill that shot glass, if you please] a cabinet of all the talents.”