It is hot in the car. Van Morrison is in the passenger seat, belting out a live version of his old hit Gloria, with the name spelt out – “G-L-O-R-I-A!”
Then the CD stops and it’s over to the news on BBC Radio 4. Another name is being chanted but to less uplifting effect – “B-O-R-I-S!”. Excitable Tory MPs gather round the microphone, glad of something cheerful to talk about. Their names come and go without making a dint in my mind.
Boris Johnson gives an acceptance speech as his victory over Jeremy Hunt is announced. And what a cliff-hanger it’s been, as we’ve waited to learn which privileged posh boy was going to win the prize of running the Conservative Party and being prime minister (as chosen by 160,000 mostly male and pale party members with gin and tonic for blood – and, yes, that’s a caricature, but then so is the man who calls himself Boris Johnson).
The speech Johnson gives is better than anything Theresa May managed. But the greatest hits of the speaking clock would be better than anything Theresa May managed.
He’s going on about delivering Brexit, uniting the country and defeating Jeremy Corbyn. “Some wag,” the blond wag waffles, has already pointed out that his election campaign slogan of deliver, unite, defeat spells dud. “But they forgot the fine e, my friends, e for energise. And I say to all the doubters: dude, we are going to energise the country.”
What’s this? Boris Johnson as The Big Lebowski in the Cohen Brothers’ film… “I’m the Dude. So that’s what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing…”
Dear God, I think as the countryside melts off go the side, are we going to have to call the new prime minister His Dudeness? The nasty thought evaporates in the heat as another Tory lickspittle clogs the airwaves with observations about the Eton Dude’s greatness, about how he is going to sort everything out and unite the country. Well, according to some critics, it will be a good day when he can keep his trousers united, but never mind.
It was a typical spot of Boris Johnson stand-up, the usual blustering baroque bollocks, a crowd-pleasing gale of words thought up on the hoof.
The Times columnist and former Tory MP Matthew Parris pops by on the radio to pull down the bunting. He points out that a “two to one majority” of those in the Conservative Party doesn’t represent the wider population…
“He was always going to win because he’s appealing to an obsessive, ideological, extremist streak in his own national membership,” Parris says. “He appealed to it shamelessly and it’s won him the leadership, but it has not won him any sense of national consensus at all.”
As I approach a nasty right-hand turn in the road (and as the country approaches a nasty right-hand turn, too), I am glad of that sharp-tongued former MP. Minutes earlier one of the anonymous Boris fan-boy MPs had been saying Johnson had secured a massive majority and now had a mandate to rule, and would sort Brexit in a twinkle.
Boris Johnson has been scheming for this moment for years. And it is, I suppose, a testament to an Eton education that a lifetime of cocking things up needn’t hold back a man who believes enough in himself.
Those of us in the cheap seats can just settle back and see how he cocks this one up.