Sherelle JACOBS

All political careers end in failure, but few reach their pinnacle so close to the edge. Boris Johnson has long fantasised about a euphoric landslide sweeping him into Downing Street, but yesterday 92,000 Tory members crowned him leader of a sinking minority government instead.

Still, Boris will be optimistic because that is who he is. His victory speech yesterday afternoon to a visibly tetchy audience of Tory MPS fizzed with energy and “can-do” determination, as he vowed to release the country’s “guy ropes of selfdoubt”. But the big political question now is whether Boris’s optimism will bring about Brexit or the swiftest downfall this country has ever seen.

There is no doubt that, after three years of being force-fed Theresa May’s mushy-middle gruel, the mouths of the malnourished Tory grassroots are finally starting to water in excited anticipation again. Boris intends to cut income tax and slash stamp duty, in a bid to put rockets under the economy. His refusal to take no deal off the table

and stubborn insistence that technology can solve the Irish border problem may yet force Brussels to blink. A political comeback for Tory grandees like David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith may also be imminent.

But there will be no mercy if he fails to deliver on Brexit. Unlike Theresa May, who was granted the luxury of death by a thousand cuts, Boris Johnson will be swallowed by a political earthquake within weeks rather than months. If we do not say au revoir to Brussels at the end of October, Conservatives will desert en masse on Nov 1. Within weeks, the steady drip of MP defections to the Brexit Party will start, as politicians scramble to save their seats. This will, in turn, bring about the collapse of a government which now has a majority of just a couple of seats.

The big danger is that the selfassured Boris is in denial about this. He would do well to realise that while brazen optimism is an asset when you’re moving mountains, it is an Achilles’ heel when you are trying to cover your filthy tracks. The worst liars are ambitious liars, because they think they can get away with almost comically elaborate deceits. Such as the idea that Brexit is a tweaked version of Theresa May’s deal. If Boris does calculate that he could convince Brexiteer MPS and Leave voters to get behind a form of the Withdrawal Agreement, then he is suffering from delusions of grandeur about his support. Remainers taunt Leavers for putting their trust in a “buffoon”’ and a “charlatan”. In fact, Brexit supporters are far more circumspect.

They accept that they do not know whether the country will get Boris the Churchillian statesman who is willing to take Britain out of the EU with no deal; or Boris the slimy Blairite who will try and slip the people an exfoliated version of Mrs May’s deal.

But after three years of appalling Tory failure, they have little choice but to take a leap of faith born out of desperation. Boris may be slippery, but the grassroots has prudently concluded that as someone who campaigned to Leave and understands the importance of keeping no deal on the cards, he is their best bet. The relationship is therefore contractual

‘Boris may be slippery, but the Conservative grassroots has prudently concluded that he is their best bet’

rather than emotional – conditional on Britain leaving the EU on Oct 31.

It is a myth that great leaders are feverish optimists. They are stone-cold pessimists too. They are willing to stare into the black abyss of potential political failure and accept the full horrors of what it could unleash. This is what Mr Johnson now must do.

Whether he realises this remains a mystery. Attending Tory hustings over the course of this month, did Boris have the humility to notice that people were applauding him with one foot out of the door? Does he truly grasp the seismometer-smashing magnitude of the failure if he misses the Oct 31 deadline? Has it truly hit home that he already has no lifelines left? Only time will tell, but we won’t have to wait too long; either Boris delivers Brexit by Hallowe’en, or he will be gone by Christmas.

As the grey grit of the Theresa May era melted away yesterday, in the bright but torrid July warmth, cynics like me could not help but detect more than a hint of pathetic fallacy. Will Boris’s sunlit optimism save the day?

Or has a Great Britain in limbo now entered the seventh fiery circle of Dante’s “Brexit Betrayal” Inferno, which ominously precedes the final two phases: Treachery and Fraud.