Robin Harris:

Now he is speaking to party members, Boris Johnson can be unashamedly Boris – and become a great PM

‘Things can only get better” – Labour used the lyrics in their triumphant 1997 general election campaign, and relief remains a powerful sentiment in politics. The prospect of seeing the back of Theresa May now – even more than of seeing the back of John Major then – is enough to lighten one’s step.

So is the advent of Boris Johnson. He is the atmospheric opposite of Mrs May – never boring, always hovering on the edge of truths that should not be spoken or deeds that may be regretted. Even when, it seems, he has a flaming row with his girlfriend after getting wine on the sofa, it is a good story. More seriously, if he finally succeeds in securing Brexit and saving the Conservative Party, he will surely be judged one of Britain’s great prime ministers.

The Tory leadership campaign, though, will not have helped reverse the Party’s misfortunes. The television debates were as bad as anyone envisaged – and in the case of the BBC, substantially worse. For their part, the leadership candidates bickered, sniped, preened, and bitched.

Perhaps the saddest moment of all was when Sajid Javid bounced the other candidates into supporting an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. One result of such nonsense is to relativise anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, where it is systemic and allegedly goes right to the top. If televised exposure was meant to display the elite of the Conservative Party, perhaps it did, and it was not a pretty sight.

Nor can Conservative MPs escape the blame. They, after all, propelled the zany, self-obsessed Rory Stewart into the third ballot. Rory was a media creation, his flimsy persona engineered to harm the Conservative cause. Yet he received the backing of the Justice Secretary, the Deputy Prime Minister and – if accounts are correct – of the Prime Minister, herself. The aim was to damage her successor, a strategy which she has been actively pursuing in her last days, incurring billions of pounds of public spending and pledging industrially crushing environmental policies.

Equally important, a large minority of Conservative MPs have shown by their votes for Remain candidates that they do not back taking Britain out of the European Union on October 31, with or without a deal. They just do not understand, and probably will never understand, the terminal crisis facing the Conservative Party if it fails to fulfil the referendum decision for Brexit.

This is all deeply unpropitious for Boris. It suggests that he will face sabotage from senior figures, and covert opposition from many others, in attempts to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement, and that he will then lack a majority in the House of Commons for a no-deal departure.

What must be said to appease fickle Tory MPs, and what has to be done in practice, are two quite different things. Boris, though he said little, has said rather too much. He should not be defensive about his article on burkas, which suggests weakness. Neither should he rehash that old cliche “One Nation Conservatism”. It suggests social guilt and higher public spending, neither of which wins votes for Tories. Theresa May made “One Nation” the theme of her premiership. That says quite enough.

The time for appeasing the parliamentary party has, anyway, ended. Speaking to party members on the hustings, Boris can be unapologetically Boris. He can remind the public how Brexit squares with a future of free markets, lower taxes, more incentives, faster growth and higher incomes. Boris, like Mrs Thatcher, understands that the British people want, above all, to be wealthier. He should be vulgar enough to promise it.

The path of EU negotiations is, thankfully, short. The EU must be given, for appearance sake, another chance to offer better terms. They will either offer none, or prevaricate, or offer very little, or else send a dismissive note – doubtless in French.

Without waiting for that, planning to minimise disruption on October 31 must be exponentially accelerated. A supremo – not necessarily a politician – should be given this Beaverbrook-style role, making daily reports to the new prime minister. Outside advice must be sought because, clearly, the tainted civil servants who devised the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be involved.

Boris Johnson has to create a Cabinet for Brexit. The temptation to let unreliable figures into government must be resisted. A litmus test might be whether Jacob Rees-Mogg is in, and whether Amber Rudd is out. That would suggest seriousness.

The talk about unifying the party, encouraged by late-comers to the Johnson camp in search of jobs, has got to stop. Unity comes from a common purpose. Those who do not share it, and will not sign up to it, have no place. If Boris makes weak decisions on personnel, he will not survive.

His government may not long survive, anyway, because of the parliamentary arithmetic. If a no-deal departure prompted a no-confidence motion, which the government lost, who knows what temporary combination of misfits might, with a little help from the Speaker’s chair, emerge. But an election would follow soon enough. One fought by the Tories on the basis of honouring the Brexit pledge, for which Boris’s government had just fallen, would surely prompt a mass return of Tory support. Each constituency must by then, of course, have in place a candidate pledged to support the policy – the task for a powerful new party chairman.

Comparisons in British Conservative politics often come back to Margaret Thatcher. But in Boris’s case, the better parallel is with Ronald Reagan. Reagan, like Boris, was whimsical, too fond of jokes, and not always focused; but he was clear about big issues, a good picker, could set a direction, always exuded bonhomie, and eventually achieved what others thought beyond not just his but anyone else’s capacity.

Mrs Thatcher said in her eulogy of him, quoting Arnold Bennett, that Ronald Reagan embodied “the great cause of cheering us all up”. So today does Boris. He can cheer us up – and get us out.

Like Mrs Thatcher, he understands that the British people want, above all, to be wealthier. He should be vulgar enough to promise it

Janet Daley is away