Boris unbound has bounced back. Can Hunt catch the big beast?
With one bound, he was free. Boris was down, but not out. And now he has been, to use his word, “unleashed” by his minders. What is going on?
The team that won the parliamentary election for Boris has been cast aside. In their place, as campaign chairman is Iain Duncan Smith — a much more impressive figure than the likes of Gavin Williamson and Grant Schapps. Duncan Smith was not a great leader, but he is a true Conservative and an authentic Brexiteer who knows instinctively what the party wants to hear. And yesterday he gave them the Boris they want.
We saw a Boris careering full-throttle towards a Hallowe’en Brexit, “do or die, come what may”. The calculation is that the price of leaving the EU without a deal has been discounted by many. A YouGov poll for the Times shows that those who want to remain (43 per cent) outnumber those who opt for No Deal (28 per cent). But 36 per cent don’t believe claims that No Deal will cause severe disruption, a similar number think they personally would be unaffected and 7 per cent think they would be better off.
In other words, the public is split between roughly equal camps: Remainers and Leavers who either prefer No Deal or are relaxed about its effects. It is the latter group that dominate the Conservative associations and to which Boris is appealing. Given the choice between the October 31 deadline and yet another extension, they will plump for getting shot of Brussels as an early Christmas present — with Boris as a boyish Santa. For Remainers, of course, the prospect of a Hallowe’en Brexit makes Boris the bogeyman.
More revealing than his radio interviews was the footage of Boris on the campaign trail. There he was in his element. Tory ladies in Wisley, Surrey, were visibly thrilled to meet him, but one had the presence of mind to say: “Just don’t have any more rows.” The adored man-child beamed back: “No more rows. No, no, no. All quiet, all quiet.” She got more out of Boris than Nick Ferrari.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt sat opposite Laura Kuenssberg outside the Royal Hospital Chelsea, warning the country to choose a Prime Minister who is trusted. He has a point: the only thing about Boris that inspires trust is his charisma. But that may be enough to win him the prize. The Tories need an election winner. And they want a proper Brexiteer, not another Remainer like Theresa May. Hunt’s frankness about the near-impossibility of agreeing a new deal by the end of October sounds like equivocation. On this cardinal point is he, not his opponent, who seems untrustworthy.
As the underdog, Hunt feels he has no choice but to attack. Yet this “blue-on-blue” criticism, however justified, sounds disloyal to Tory ears. It also fits into the Johnsonian narrative of an elite mired in “morosity and gloom”, from whose negativity the nation needs rescuing. Lord Finkelstein warns Hunt that he should ignore Boris and be positive if he is to create “Jeremymania”. A phenomenon that is so hard even to pronounce is likely to be a chimera.
Hunt’s best hope is that we have not heard the last of Boris’s private life. More facts may yet emerge that turn even the toughest of Tory stomachs. He has already given a whole new meaning to the Blair-era phrase “sofa government”. And the Duncan Smith strategy of removing the “cotton wool” also carries a risk. Boris likes to shoot from the hip and he may shoot himself in the foot.
A week ago, it looked likely that the Conservatives would give themselves a choice between the two architects of the Leave campaign: Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. The more unsavoury elements in the Boris camp ensured that Gove was eliminated, supposedly to avoid a potentially damaging “psychodrama”. Boris, however, has provided more than enough of that, all by himself. The great British public is certainly gripped by the spectacle, but so far not in a good way. And there is always the possibility that Gove may yet speak out against the man of whom he said just three years ago that “he was not capable of…leading the party and the country”.
So there is still everything to play for in the war of Boris’s ego. The Tories may be leaning towards an end with horror rather than a horror without end. But the country has yet to decide whether to believe a word they say about Brexit — or, indeed, anything else.
