It’s early days but I pray he can rise above himself

EVERYTHING is in the name. Where the Conservative Party was once led by Margaret Hilda, now the Prime Minister is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel – from the soundly English to the almost comically cosmopolitan. From somebody home-grown with nothing to prove, to someone wilfully quirky and ultra-patriotic; from a Prime Minister you took on trust, to somebody yet to earn the country’s respect.

I know Johnson and worked alongside Thatcher, first as principal private secretary to her Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, then as a Minister and occasional speech-writer.

Would she have cheered the Prime Minister’s knockabout in the House of Commons last Thursday?

Like me she would have warmed to Johnson when he laid into Corbyn, a phoney messiah and a scheming simpleton who gets away with far too much.

Yet the deeper question is this: who is the bigger patriot? The earnest, conscientious lower-middle-class grammar-school girl, whose roots were deep in her country and who restored our prestige abroad?

Or a showman novice, gesticulating at times like a South American general when he delivers his nationalistic bombast, grinning as if it were all a school play?

For some, it was exhilarating; for others as uplifting as a pound-shop brassiere.

THERE is no doubting Johnson’s oratorical potential and, by God, we shall need it when the time comes. Meanwhile, his excesses have helped bring sterling to its knees and our country into disrepute. Currently, our only international backers are Messrs Trump and Putin – not something Mrs Thatcher would have applauded.

We should remember, too, the make-up of the Cabinet in her time, which featured serious names like Keith Joseph, Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit, Peter Carrington and Willie Whitelaw.

In contrast, Johnson has surrounded himself with over-promoted figures such as Priti Patel and Gavin Williamson. I fear that a more Blair-style sofa government is on the way.

Worse, while Thatcher relished combat with colleagues and high-grade officials, today the No10 machine will be dominated not by professionals but an intellectual whizzkid, Dominic Cummings. Was ‘Take Back Control’ a masterly referendum slogan – or a lie? A lie, because most of the mass immigration that troubled a fundamentally non-racist country was non-European and under our control already.

With Cummings in No10, and Seumas Milne the key man in Corbyn’s office, we now have perfect symmetry. The nerve centres of both Left and Right are controlled by a pair of precocious private schoolboys who venerate revolutionary heroes like Mao and Lenin, and whose anarchic instincts could combine to push the country over a cliff. Why? Because for different reasons these ideologues yearn to ‘smash the system’. The Germans have an ugly word for this: zerstörungslustig – the joys of destruction.

The danger is that the indolence and indecision of Johnson (try saying that of Thatcher) could give unelected advisers a field day. With experts now derided, are we to listen to the untested theories of ‘creative destroyers’ instead?

As a Cold War diplomat in Russia and China over many years, I saw a lot of that, and the results weren’t pretty.

Boris is right that we all need cheering up, but he is wrong to dismiss nearly half the population as gloomsters when we are up the creek without a paddle and the water is up to his neck. He would be a fool not to be afraid, and believe me he is.

Britain has painted itself into a corner and we need Johnson to find a way out.

I agree with the Brexit-ultras that the present May deal is unattractive, though ultimately they are to blame for the mess.

There must be concessions from Europe matched with plausibly disguised concessions from us. As the arch-realist Thatcher would have said: ‘There is no alternative.’

Damage limitation is the name of the game for the moment. But remember, too, the opportunities that will come when some sort of agreement is reached.

If Johnson uses his clever men constructively and engineers an EU deal, the relief across the country and the markets will be immense.

That would be the moment for him to pounce on the pestilential Corbyn in an Election, distributing the savings earned by Philip Hammond as he goes.

Margaret Hilda would most certainly have applauded that.