Forget the fighting. We’re entering a period of unparalleled opportunity for the Tories

Auf wiedersehen, Boris. He’ll be back, like a blond, bloated Voldemort inhabiting another life form – Top Gear host? Archbishop of York? Or endless BBC camping tours of Britain on a bike, the Portillo of the Portacabin?

As Boris’ agent collects the offers – and his publishers are still owed a Shakespeare biography by the end of this anniversary year – he leaves behind him a Conservative Party scarred but resilient. There’ll be recriminations this week. Yet there’ll also be enduring relief, as one of Britain’s oldest institutions finds itself finally free of wrangling Etonians, chaps whose Brobdingnagian entitlement so undermined the gospel of One Nation inclusivity that both presumed to preach.

It matters, then, that the final coup to Boris was delivered by the self-made son of a fish-gutter. By removing the most controversial man in the party, Michael Gove has done the cause of Conservative unity a considerable favour. Unfortunately for him, that’s not the only thing that unity requires.