IT MAY be a controversial view for a progressive to take, but I’m increasingly of the opinion that Boris Johnson is the right man to win the UK’s general election on December 12.
Simply put, the next parliament and government are quite likely to be even more disastrous than this one, and Johnson needs to be in the water when the tide goes out.
Quite why anyone else would want to be anywhere near the crime scene is beyond me.
And giving Johnson the keys to Number 10 for a few years will give Labour the chance to replace the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn with someone a bit more, umm, electable.
The thing is, for all that we’ve argued about Brexit, it hasn’t actually happened yet.
We’ve had three years of national division and name-calling, but the proverbial poo is still a long way from the fan, even though the writing's on the wall.
When the Brexit poo hits, there is little to suggest the aftermath will be anything other than poo-covered.
And the current crop of back-of-a-fag-packet ideologues who are likely to be in charge have precisely zero track record in executing anything other than catchy three-word slogans.
Watching Johnson try to fit his three-word phrases into interviews and speeches as many times as possible might make a good drinking game, but just saying “Get Brexit Done” isn’t a policy any more than “Take Back Control” was.
Meaningless slogans cooked up by election experts offer absolutely nothing to suggest that this government will do anything other than cock up Brexit. We have the evidence. They've been cocking it up very publicly for the past three years.
If you talk to other experts - in things like trade and economics - the picture for Britain over the next few years is muted, at best, with or without leaving the EU.
In fairness to Johnson and co, many of the challenges Britain faces come from outside the country. Trade flows are flattening or declining. Investment is slowing. Markets are over-valued. Economies everywhere flirt with recession.
That’s not Johnson’s fault, but pulling the UK out of dozens of its closest trading relationships - which won’t help - is his fault.
And for that, he and his cronies must be at the helm to take the blame. Even if the blame is unfair, it must be laid at his feet in order to do as much damage as possible to his whimsically isolationist brand of politics.
The parallels with Labour’s fall from grace are obvious.
Gordon Brown didn’t cause the Global Financial Crisis - American banks did - but it didn’t help that when trouble hit, the treasury was perilously over-stretched.
When the tide went out, the UK wasn’t wearing any knickers, and Labour has been punished for it ever since, even though Brown, Blair & Co were only partly culpable. In the same way, Johnson & Co need to be in the frame for the next shock if the eye-swivellers are ever to be put back in their box.
The downfall could come from anywhere, but what’s almost certain, is that it will blind-side a government likely to be made up of hopeless, ideology-driven incompetents.
Does anyone for a minute think that this election is about to return 650 reflective, qualified, benevolent lawmakers? Don't be daft.
Instead we’ll return a parliament of rabble-rousing nincompoops, ill-equipped for the task ahead.
Johnson is likely to win, even though more than half of the country are likely to vote against him.
He will ride high in his invisible robes briefly, then be swamped by the enormity of the task and the instant unpopularity that is inevitable not only because most people will have voted for someone else, but because his own manifesto essentially amounts to a promise that austerity won’t get any more, well, austere.
In short, we're promoised more of the same.
That, of course, and “Getting Brexit Done”. Yawn.
It has always been obvious to anyone with a sensible reading of the situation that the UK’s problems, such as they are, have little or nothing to do with the EU.
But it is only when the UK finally leaves the EU that reality will be placed rudely under the noses of the entire British public, remainers and Brexiteers alike.
Immigration has already dried up of its own volition. Are people any happier? Of course not. Will wages and living standards suddenly expand apace outside the EU? The opposite is more likely. Will our exporters suddenly be swamped with booming demand from all over the world for our myriad of services and manufactured goods? No. Because most trade, globally, is between neighbouring countries, and we're making that harder.
At least our wise lawmakers will be able to legislate on food packaging standards right here in Mighty Blighty. Thank heavens.
All the things that made unhappy people vote for Brexit will remain after Brexit, and the architects of this mess ought to be in the dock when it happens, lest they point the finger at someone else.
There was a time when I would have sighed and said, 'Oh well, the country will get what it votes for', only that's not true. It won’t.
Yet this entire mess is, in complete totality, 100% the Tories' doing.
It is perhaps right and proper that it is they who drive us off the cliff.
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