If Jo Swinson wants to lead a successful Remain coalition, she’ll need to come out swinging

Thanks either to a weird accident of timing or crude Tory cunning, Boris Johnson won’t be the only new leader unveiled on 23 July (the anniversary, aptly, of The Beatles releasing “Help!”).

If your attention’s been monopolised by Johnson’s tragicomic lurch to power, know that on the same day, the next Liberal Democrat guv’nor will also be revealed.

Whether the Conservatives timed their climax to steal the Lib Dem thunder, who can say? But on Tuesday next week, barring an upset as seismic as a Jeremy Hunt win, Jo Swinson will beat Ed Davey to succeed Vince Cable.

The news will be rendered inaudible by the din as Baby Trump shambles into Downing Street. For Swinson this will be both terrible luck and a blessing.

Leaders of minor parties have little time to stamp their imprint on the public consciousness. Arriving to a fanfare of “meh” is hardly ideal.

Then again, ghosting into the job might suit a politician whose experience is in inverse proportion to the magnitude of her task.

Never in the field of political conflict has so much rested on someone known to so few.

Her name will be familiar to barely 5 per cent of the population, and that one in 20 would struggle to select her in an ID parade if everyone else in the line was a Tibetan mountain yak.

For all that, the 39-year-old Scot could be monumentally important in shaping the future.

Opportunities like the one she will inherit come seldom for a third party (if fourth behind the SNP in the Commons).

In fact, there hasn’t been one like it in memory. The last time the Lib Dems were close to a major breakthrough, in 2010, it fizzled out. Previous surges under Charles Kennedy (so much better drunk than any present leader sober) were restricted by the rigid electoral maths of the first-past-the-post, two-party system.

Today, the system is on the brink of rupture. With the main parties embroiled in civil warfare, and wildly unpopular by historic polling standards, the extreme volatility makes a realignment of this gangrenous political settlement a credible prospect.

No pressure on Swinson, but the responsibility will be hers. Her capacity to offer sanctuary to the politically homeless millions will be crucial. The decisions she takes in the weeks ahead could be as decisive as those of Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

Her earliest decisions seem obvious. First, she needs to a formal alliance with the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru to create an unequivocally pro-Remain axis representing about 39 per cent of voters by the latest polls.

She also needs to coax those struggling with their consciences to join her. What Rory Stewart thinks he’s doing in this Tory party is a mystery to everyone, presumably including himself. The same goes for Jess Phillips, Stella Creasy and other talented communicators on the Labour back benches.

If the nightmares of Johnson’s accession and Corbyn’s stranglehold on the Labour machine don’t persuade the above that their parties are not the ones they joined, and aren’t about to revert, nothing will. Talk of fighting from within is specious cobblers, and they know it.

If Swinson could pluck some of this low-hanging, high-profile fruit and create a militantly pro-EU axis, the Lib Dems would be in a mighty position to fight the autumn election Johnson is likelier than not to call.

His cultivated imbecility may entice the geriatrics of the shires to throw their incontinence underwear at the stage. But a few weeks of his burbling do-or-die no-deal gibberish should clarify his fitness for purpose to swathes of the populace beyond the Tory membership.

If, as anticipated, he seeks the most engaging non-aggression since the one between Hitler and Stalin, the challenge for anti-no-dealers will be crystal clear. An electoral alliance between Johnson and Nigel Farage would account for about 45 per cent of voters.

In that event, the sensible response from the opposition parties would be to form a monolithic voting bloc of their own as the only viable way to prevent the election of a no-deal parliament.

Arguing that this quasi-war is no time and place for tribality, Swinson should make the grand offer to Corbyn in the hope that he accepts and the expectation that he doesn’t.

If he does, the Remain coalition would have a narrow popular-vote edge. If not, she would be in a stronger position to siphon off Remainer MPs who realise the issue is too monumental to be devolved to misplaced tribal loyalties.

She will have to be bolder and more assured than one has a right to expect from a newbie. She goes into this unknown and untested, and with no time to acclimatise to the big time.

She needs, in other words, to be Coco Gauff. The consolation is that she won’t face against anyone half as gifted as Simona Halep. The downside is that she won’t get another shot next year and for untold years to come.

Cliche holds that new leaders have 100 days to imprint themselves on the job. Jo Swinson will be lucky to get 20 – and the first few of those will be lost to the Johnson hysteria.

Once that starts to fade, all she has to do is spearhead the no-deal resistance, finesse wavering refuseniks in the big parties to risk their careers by joining the Lib Dems, and establish herself as a recognisable figure on the national stage. Oh yes, and buck the trend that has seen centrist parties diminished or wiped out right across the democratic world.

To do all that from a launchpad of unimpeachable obscurity, with minimal experience as a junior ministerial colluder in the coalition government and deputy leader of a rump party, isn’t a small ask.

She’ll be forgiven if her first official act is to take to her bed with a packet of Xanax, and sleep through the first few days. Then she needs to come out swinging, and let those who missed it know that Johnson wasn’t the only party leader elected on 23 July.