No, Jeremy Hunt, the rest of the world isn’t telling you to have the ‘courage’ to get on with Brexit

Not since David Blaine starved himself in a Perspex box over Tower Bridge for 44 days has the nation witnessed an endurance event quite like the Tory leadership contest, though it is far from clear whether it is us, or them, doing the enduring.

It is, quite incredibly, only Day 13 of Hunt vs Johnson, less than halfway, which is perhaps too early for Jeremy Hunt’s eat-sleep-bollocks-repeat spin cycle to have come full circle. From amusingly ridiculous to borderline unsettling, and all the way back to ridiculous again, becoming perhaps the world’s first political campaign to double as a performance art homage to Alan Partridge repeatedly shouting “Dan!” in a hotel car park.

Last night it was Jon Snow of Channel 4 News’s turn to press play on the Hunt not-very-greatest hits video jukebox, complete, as ever, with Thunderbirds head wobble. (Hunt was somehow passed by during the class A drugs phase of this contest, yet he is the only one whose head moves like a man found alone in the Glastonbury dance village at 8am.)

Jon Snow was not the first to want to know why Jeremy Hunt used to think Brexit was a terrible idea and now he thinks it’s a great idea, when it so very obviously still is a terrible idea. And Jon Snow was not the first person to be told: “One of my concerns about Brexit was about the short-term effects on the economy, the emergency budget, mass unemployment, recession. None of that materialised.”

Which, of course, it didn’t. What did materialise was a huge and unforeseen global economic boom, which the UK has missed out on, and which is now slowing down at terrifying speed, right at the point at which Jeremy Hunt has decided Brexit will probably be fine so let’s just get crack on with it.

Jon Snow also had some pointed questions for Hunt, in his other role as foreign secretary, and his response to crises in Hong Kong and on the US border. To which Jeremy Hunt wobbled and waggled his head like an Indian train conductor and said that, well, in the end, America and China are just going to do what they like, aren’t they?

Jon Snow also wanted to know, just like everybody else, how it is he is going to find a way through the Brexit mess, given his Brexit plan is exactly the same as Theresa May’s, who a) didn’t get it through and then b) with a fair bit of reluctance, resigned over it.

But Jeremy Hunt, as ever, thinks everything’s going to be fine. And why’s it going to be fine? Well this is where things got faintly interesting. According to Hunt, back in 2016 there was no settled view on the shape of Brexit, but that debate was settled by the 2017 referendum, when “80 per cent of the votes cast were for parties that supported leaving the single market and the customs union”.

This is a quite fantastic admission. Back then, you might recall, Theresa May was going around the country, saying, on torturous repeat, “Strengthen my hand in the negotiations with Brussels”, and “If I lose just six seats, it will be Jeremy Corbyn sitting down to negotiate with Brussels.”

The people ignored her plea, and it’s been attrition-based carnage ever since. So now it turns out that it frankly didn’t matter in the slightest who you voted for because they’re exactly the same anyway is surprising, to say the least. The moment the voters returned a hung parliament – that was the moment the problem should have been sorted out. All that’s needed now is for Jeremy Hunt to come and tell them, and it’ll all be sorted. Britain will “walk tall in the world” again, as Jeremy Hunt said, again.

“People around the world have more respect for us than we have for ourselves,” he said, for the roughly eight millionth time. “They are looking at us to see whether we have the courage to implement Brexit.”

Courage is one word, Jeremy. Others are available.