Ross Clark

So there goes the reputation of Boris Johnson’s henchmen as cunning operators. It has been a bad week for Dominic Cummings and others in the Downing Street bunker who were widely assumed to have gamed every possibility and to have some genius strategy for delivering Brexit by 31 October, in spite of the assembled forces of Remain who are determined to stop them. Clearly, not everything has gone to plan. The Remainers have enjoyed their Battle of Marston Moor. It is Parliamentarians 1, Cavaliers 0. On Monday, a bill seeking to prevent a no-deal Brexit on 31 October will become law – and Boris has been denied his fallback: a general election. But not so fast.

Was there ever such a principled stand over a such a feeble cause? If today’s Tory rebels were intent on overturning the 2016 referendum result because, in all their conscience, they could support a policy of leaving the EU, I would not agree with what they were doing, but I would have some grudging respect for it. Instead, what is the great issue at stake in today’s vote? Another extension of Article 50 to 31 January. Yep, another three whole months in the EU. But to what purpose? The rebels can’t come up with a more specific demand because they do not know or cannot agree on what they want. Some want to remain, others think we should leave but do not know how.

There is a role in British public life known as the Elder Statesman – a former cabinet minister who dispenses wisdom to those currently in office based on their own experiences and observations. There are two qualifications for such a position: firstly, that you leave a decent period between leaving office and setting yourself up in the role, so that it is clear you are not simply trying to settle old scores; and secondly that you are prepared to take an objective approach to your own time in office, admitting to mistakes, saying how you would now approach the problems that you faced in office, with the benefit of hindsight. Philip Hammond fails on both grounds.

A standard version of this autumn’s events is beginning to emerge. Labour brings a no-confidence vote in the Government on 4 September. The Tories, down to a majority of one – and with several Conservative old-timers vowing to go out in style by torpedoing their own Government in a last act of defiance to stop a no-deal Brexit – loses. Rather than resign, Boris spends the 14 days he would be allowed under the Fixed Term Parliament Act trying to build a majority. He fails. And Corbyn, too, is unable to form a majority. Boris calls a general election – but crucially stretches it out just beyond 31 October, when we drop out of the EU without a deal. No further Parliamentary efforts can be made to stop no deal because the Commons will be prorogued for the election.

The sense of excitement among some Remainers is almost palpable. Finally – after three years of waiting – a quarter of negative growth has materialised following all the grim warnings of Brexit-related economic turmoil. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) this morning released its first estimate for economic growth for the second quarter of this year, which has come out at minus 0.2 per cent. That counteracts unexpectedly strong growth in the first quarter of 0.5 per cent. Manufacturing, which shrank by 2.3 per cent, was the worst-performing sector of the economy. The dominant services sector expanded but only just, at 0.1 per cent.

So that’s that, then. Just as the backers of a ‘government of national unity’ appeared to have their tails up, along comes shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey to scotch it, saying that Labour will back no such thing. It should come as no surprise. Corbyn wants to govern on his own terms – and be Prime Minister. He doesn’t want to be a junior minister in some outfit led by Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn, or any of the other backbenchers who have spent the past three years trying to unseat him as Labour leader. He wants national disunity, followed by a general election.

Boris Johnson’s premiership is in danger of being undermined by a single loose remark. No, not one involving burqas, Liverpool, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Darius Guppy and all the other many and varied ways he has offended people over the years. The remark which risks doing the real damage is his off-the-cuff comment in a hustings on 26 June when he claimed that the chances of a no-deal Brexit are ‘a million to one’. Really? That is not quite how the bookies see it – Betfair and Paddy Power are this morning offering 17/10 on a no-deal departure on 31 October, while Betfred is giving 6/4. Given that bookies live or die according to their ability to assess the chances of these sort of events I suggest that they are closer to reality than the Prime Minister.

Just what would be it take for the Guardian to stop suggesting Conservatives are racists? We now have the four great offices of state held by: a man baptised Catholic but now a functioning atheist, a man with a Jewish father but who was brought up in the Church of England, a son of Pakistani immigrants and of woman of Indian origin. But has it led to the Left championing what might – were the Cabinet a BBC programme – be celebrated as an explosion of diversity? You’ve guessed it. According to the Left, Boris’s Cabinet is not an example of ‘vibrant’ modern Britain in action, it is instead a case of the new PM 'parading a set of token figures to legitimise his agenda'.

If, as expected, Boris Johnson heads off to Buckingham Palace next Wednesday to become Prime Minister, I fear that a fleet of ambulances may be required at the Guardian’s headquarters in King’s Cross – as the newspaper’s collective Boris Derangement Syndrome moves into its final, and possibly terminal, phase. All week the Guardian has been running ever-more desperate stuff in its final attempt to dissuade Tory members from voting for Boris – which looks like being as successful as its appeal for readers to write heartfelt letters to US citizens, imploring them not to vote for George W Bush in the 2004 US Presidential election.