When Boris Johnson chants his mantra of delivering Brexit, uniting the country and beating Jeremy Corbyn, it is very much a personal imperative. For the simple reason that if he fails, as many of his colleagues anticipate, he will look like a blithering idiot.
The point is that back in the spring of 2016, he faced a nation-defining fork in the road, when he was dithering about whether to stick with the then PM David Cameron and fight to stay in the EU or lead the leave campaign. Cameron will believe till his last breath that Johnson’s defection to Brexit tipped the scales against him. And when Cameron lost, May took over, and the rest was chaos and mayhem for the Tory party.
But let’s play the game of counterfactuals.
If Johnson had stuck with Cameron and Remain had won, Cameron would have stood down as PM roughly when May did, this spring.
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