Can Boris Johnson survive if he breaks his Brexit promise?

It gives me no pleasure to report this of my former Daily Telegraph colleague, but some people who know Boris Johnson don’t trust him. Whatever the Prime Minister’s other virtues, he is not seen by some acquaintances as a man who will always keep his word, who always does the things he says he will do.

Polls appear to suggest that the public isn’t much more impressed with Johnson’s integrity. YouGov reckons just 24 per cent see him as “trustworthy” and the same proportion rate him as “honest”.

That should be a problem, given that so much of Johnson’s political strategy (and possibly Britain’s future) now rides on his ability to do the thing he has repeatedly said he will do and take Britain out of the European Union on 31 October – do or die, dead in a ditch, etc etc.

I won’t rehearse here the arguments about whether that is actually possible or likely, given EU reactions to the PM’s proposed Brexit deal and in light of the Benn Act’s fairly clear instructions to the executive.