I’m going to talk about Boris Johnson. Original, I know.

I like politicians. I think, by and large, they’re decent people, trying to help others. When I think about politics, about politicians, about ‘being political’, I think of causes that people care about. If you have an opinion on climate change, you are political. If you have an opinion on the state of the NHS, or schools, or housing, or the prison system, you are political. You’re political because you’ve got an opinion on how things should be run. You’re thinking about society; even if you’re not actively trying to make a change, you’re engaged. And so I look to various politicians, from all parties. Jess Phillips on domestic abuse. Stella Creasy on abortion. Phillip Hammond and Rory Stewart, resigning from Cabinet rather than countenance a no-deal Johnson government. These are principles, opinions that they stand up and fight for, things they got in to politics to make right. That’s the distilled essence of what politics should be – making things right.

I don’t think any of this applies to Boris Johnson. And a lot of other politicians, to be fair to him, but Johnson has just been elected the next Prime Minister.

I find myself repelled whenever he speaks. The stumbling; the ‘uhm uhm uhm’; the way he boggles his eyes as he employs a comical stress on certain words; the use of inventive metaphor, the inclusion of the occasional Brobdingnagian, even Daedalian term. Artifice, all of it. Frustratingly obvious artifice.

He is funny. Despite myself, I do find him entertaining. And that’s what people want. We don’t need our politicians to be well-informed, decent, detail-orientated, focused, principled. Johnson is plainly none of these-

(I’m assuming understanding on a lot of my points about him because it’s well-trodden ground, but as a side note let’s just quickly illustrate those adjectives. Well-informed, detail-orientated, focused? Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe begs to differ. Decent? Take your pick, I’ve got spares – sacked for fabricating quotation and detail at The Times; recorded conspiring to have a journalist beaten up; multiple affairs, with him being sacked from the Tory frontbench for lying about one, and a currently-unknown number of children. Principled? The two contradictory Brexit articles; the initial insistence on staying in the single market, on being like Norway, on leaving the EU with a deal, before changing his mind when politically expedient to argue that no deal is closest to what people were voting for)-

He is an entertainer. A character. Boris. I overheard someone today say ‘at least politics won’t be boring anymore. I stopped watching a while ago.’ Stopped watching. Politics not as the focused and detailed discussion and implementation of plans to improve society, but as entertainment. Keeping Up With the Johnsons. The Real Housewives of Westminster. Something to follow, to be amused by, but not to think about, never to actually consider in a meaningful way.

And so the Leave campaign won. Because he wasn’t boring. It was a risk, it was a punt, it was a bit of fun. He is universally regarded as having been an excellent Mayor of London – because he wasn’t boring, never mind what he actually did or didn’t do. We’ve somehow forgotten about his blundering about as Foreign Secretary, we’ve somehow forgotten about his campaign releasing what was clearly an old photograph of him and his girlfriend as damage control after their blazing, police-summoning row, we’ve somehow forgotten about the £350m to the NHS, we’ve forgotten, we’ve forgotten…

Because that’s Boris. Not Johnson – just Boris. He’s a one-name brand, like Madonna or Cher or Jesus. Boris cartwheels from one lie to the next, skateboards from the half-pipe of one broken promise to another, and we’re left in the dust. Because all that stuff, you know, the contradictory policy positions, the lies, the lurking malevolence, that was before. And now it’s now. So we’re going to Back Boris, because he Believes in Britain, and he’s going to Send Brussels Packing using his Can-Do Spirit!

They’ll turn on him, in the end. The wheel won’t stop turning. It’ll never be enough, it’ll be one compromise too far, we won’t have come out on the 31^st of October (he’ll choose die), and he’ll have called a second referendum using opposition votes as the only way of getting his deal (or no deal) through Parliament. The Boris Bop will end. Do you remember the Steel of the New Iron Lady? Or how Peter Bone intended to erect a statue to the Queen of Brexit, Theresa May? See how they turned on her. Now Priti Patel says that with Johnson ‘at long last’ we’ll have a Prime Minister who believes in Britain. She was happy enough to serve under Cameron and May at the time, of course. There was no grumbling about how unpatriotic they are. Strange, isn’t it?

May’s Withdrawal Agreement took us out of the Single Market, the Customs Union, took control of our money, borders, laws, all that. Imagine offering that to a Brexiteer in 2016. That’s it, we’re out, 29^th of March, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Most of them would have taken it in a heartbeat. But it was the backstop, the dreaded backstop, that stopped them in 2017/18/19. We want a technological solution instead. Never mind that it’s written in to the backstop that it only comes in to force if another solution isn’t found – a cheeky acknowledgment from the Brexiteers that they won’t ever be able to find such technology because it doesn’t exist, and so we’ll always be stuck in the backstop, because they’re liars and frauds, but don’t think about that, think about this, look over there-

The deck is stacked against Johnson in exactly the same way it was against May. Changing Prime Minister is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Parliament is opposed to leaving the EU in any form, revoking Article 50, or holding a second referendum. The EU won’t fundamentally change the Withdrawal Agreement. Corbyn denied May a majority at the last election, and the Tories are afraid that another snap election will finish them off. Amusingly, May’s tiny majority looks to be slashed to 1 under Prime Minister Johnson, leaving him even less room to manoeuvre. He’s boxed in from all sides. The main difference is timing. May triggered Article 50 and had two years to play with. Johnson takes office with 100 days to go until his self-imposed deadline.

Who knows? I’ve given up trying to predict what will happen. Whatever does happen will happen in a very compressed amount of time. Despite the bluster, I think the consequences of no deal will make Johnson balk at jumping when the time comes, for the simple reason of self-preservation. A country forced to make the decision between life-saving medicines, food, and nuclear material to keep the power stations running will not forgive Johnson at the ballot box. It has been his life dream to become Prime Minister. He won’t throw it away so easily. So after the 31^st of October deadline has elapsed, all bets are off. It wouldn’t surprise me if Johnson is thrown on the Brexit bonfire soon after – after all, he never believed in Britain, did he?

*Title taken from the excellent JOE Johnson/Stormzy mash-up, found here.