Boris Johnson’s pathological unreliability may end up being his only saving grace

Not so long ago the conventional political wisdom was that although the Tory grassroots found Boris Johnson irresistible, those who knew him best (politically) found his “magnetic personality” barely tolerable.

Conservative members of parliament, in other words, would presumably ensure that Mr Johnson never made it to the leadership contest final two, where he would be able to work his catnip routines on the activists. Therefore he could never become leader or prime minister.

That, however, was before multiple Brexit failures drove them mad with frustration. Refusing to countenance the possibility that Brexit was collapsing under the weight of its contradictions, and refusing to accept that Britain could not after all have its cake and eat it, they jettisoned the luckless Theresa May and opened up the leadership. Again.

The door was opened for a Johnson premiership. Such is his lead among MPs – the ones who were supposed to apply a brake on his blond ambitions – that he will certainly make the final two. Such is his popularity among the Conservative membership that he would be unlucky indeed not to carry them. He might well win big, which would suit his ego. A Johnson premiership seems pretty much unstoppable. It will probably be a disaster.

Given the racing-certainty odds on Mr Johnson, many Conservative backbenchers and ministers are simply backing him in the hope of gaining preferment if, or when, Mr Johnson starts to construct his government. Some – like Gavin Williamson and Sir Michael Fallon – will be looking for a return to the cabinet; others will be seeking some sort of promotion or just to be able to hang on to their existing position.

There are some juicy jobs up for grabs, and “backing Boris” will put them in pole position to lobby for themselves. By contrast, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and Sajid Javid will be well aware that their underwhelming showing will do the opposite – weaken any claim they might have to high office. If the Boris bandwagon really starts to roll they will find themselves sidelined by it.

There were other mild surprises in the first ballot. Andrea Leadsom, who was perhaps one disastrous matriarchal soundbite from No 10 last time around, had a spectacularly miserable showing. Esther McVey, too, found little audience for her head-banging approach to Brexit and her implausible claim to be the champion of the working classes. Dominic Raab, who has made a name for himself as the man prepared to headbutt the Queen to get Brexit by forcing her to prorogue parliament, also had a disappointing first round.

Taken together, the hardest of the Brexiteers – Ms McVey, Mr Raab and Ms Leadsom – garnered fewer than 50 votes. It is further proof that the no-deal tendency in the parliamentary Conservative Party is a smaller minority than it sometimes looks. However, it is in an even larger majority of the membership than it ever was. Therein lies the danger.

For those hoping to drag the Conservative Party back to sanity on Brexit and much else, Rory Stewart is at least still in the game. A cabinet minister for only a few weeks and still not well known, he did well in the circumstances and may yet make more progress. He performs well on the hustings – earnest and honest, or at least seeming to be.

A leadership election between Boris Johnson and Rory Stewart would provide a greater, more genuine choice then one between any of the other permutations of no-dealers.

All of the remaining candidates, with the exception of Mr Stewart and Mr Hancock, have explicitly stated that, forced into a choice between no deal and no Brexit, they would choose no deal.

The Tory leadership election’s peculiarities have been thrown into sharp relief. In the parliamentary rounds it is about trying to sound Eurosceptic, but tempered with the need to make some appeal to the more moderate body of opinion on Brexit in the Commons.

Yet, once that is over, and the battle moves to the membership, it becomes a simple auction as to who can be the more militantly pro-Brexit leader. That is why there must be some relief that those Brexit ultras, such as Ms McVey and Ms Leadsom, and probably Mr Raab, won’t be figuring in that part of the contest.

So far as the national interest is concerned, the only slight flicker of hope in an otherwise dismal scene is the very unreliability of Mr Johnson.

Sometime, in the autumn, Mr Johnson will return from a rambunctious trip to Brussels more or less empty-handed. Parliament will outlaw a no-deal option. What do the Conservatives do then? Say Mr Johnson didn’t try hard enough? Throw him out and send for Mr Raab or Steve Baker? Defy the Queen? Or face reality, at last, and put the question to the people?

Mr Johnson has a track record of being flexible in his approach to his personal and political life, his eyes firmly set upon the main prize (that being the aggrandisement of Boris Johnson). Not for nothing did he declare at the age of eight his ambition to be king of the whole world.

It is, though it may sound fanciful now, perfectly possible that Mr Johnson – faced between a choice of a Final Say referendum, which he might win, and a general election he would be certain to lose – might well choose to go for the referendum and to stay in Downing Street, whatever the verdict of the voters turned out to be.

It will be made all the more likely when, rather than if, parliament once again takes back control of its destiny and rules out the disaster of a no-deal Brexit. MPs have done that before and, despite the pessimism of Sir Oliver Letwin after the latest attempt failed, they can and should succeed in the future. MPs cannot allow Mr Johnson to prorogue parliament, which he has hinted privately to some of his backers he might be prepared to do.

Mr Johnson may be on his way to Downing Street – though he could implode with the force of a supernova at any moment – but he is not about to assume absolute power. Far from it.

His “mandate” will amount to perhaps 80,000 Conservative Party members and, say, 200 MPs. He will preside over a minority government, reliant on the DUP. He will have rebels to face down on all sides, people who will now personally have even less to lose than they did under Theresa May. He will not force Brussels to do anything it does not wish to do.

In any case, he is not there yet, and there are plenty of skeletons in Mr Johnson’s closet, and plenty of enemies willing to tip them out. He would not be the first favourite ultimately to fail.