An alternative PM wouldn’t stand a chance of defeating Johnson’s toxic politics – but a council of leaders could

When he abuses the memory of Jo Cox to widen division, we honour her by sticking together. And a council of national unity, or whatever it chose to call itself, is the way to do just that

Listening to what he said, or more accurately what he didn’t say, the mind-bendingly byzantine complexities of Brexit were reduced to one impishly simple little thought.

They must get rid of him. They need to remove him, and they need to do so within days.

The identity of the “him” speaks, as he refuses to, for itself. He wouldn’t apologise to Jo Cox’s friends for deriding their natural fears that he will incite another slogan-spouting maniac to murder. He blamed it all on a misunderstanding. Which sounded startlingly like humbug.

He wouldn’t deny that, should his rhetoric stir violence (as Amber Rudd warned), he would make the Civil Contingencies Act his ally in the crusade for no deal.

Nor did he deny it when Andrew Marr asked if he has lobbied any other EU leaders, specifically the Magyar demi dictator Viktor Orban, to veto an extension. He tacitly acknowledged the possibility of colluding with a foreign power to crash us out on Halloween.

Just about all he would say, apart from the gibberish about the 40 new hospitals, was, repeatedly, “surrender bill”. On the News of the World reader paedophile/paediatrician confusion template, it may not be long before some boneheaded thug mistakenly directs their anger at a British Asian person with a certain forename. A Newham Council resourcing manager, I see on Linkedin, is called Surinder Bal. Mr Bal, I beg you to consider temporary deed poll until this fever has broken.

We all know what Boris Johnson’s plan is. Life is too short to read (let alone write) another screechy whine about the Bannon-Cummings anarcho-nutter divide-and-rule-by-inflaming-hatred playbook.

It is what it is – and what it is, apart from tooth enamel-meltingly repulsive, is a plan with a serious chance of succeeding here as three years ago in the US.

To get his general election, Johnson is desperate to goad an opposition party to call the confidence vote that might well facilitate it. The tactic is so blatant, it might as well be stamped “HazTrap!”.

Yet with Johnson adamant about not asking for to request an extension, the only reliable way to rule out no deal is to end his tenure. And the only relatively reliable way to do that is via the vote of no confidence he craves.

If he calculates that the odds are stacked against being replaced via this method, he’s probably right. Even if the confidence vote floated by the SNP for this week were won, it’s unlikely a Commons majority would settle on an alternative PM within the 14 days allotted by statute before an election becomes mandatory.

The problem is the lack of a figure around whom some 320 MPs – Labour, SNP, Lib Dems, former Tories, Plaid Cymru and the lone Green – would coalesce.

There are other drawbacks. Ousting Johnson would cause an eruption of rage – some genuine; more of it synthesised by propaganda sheets posing as newspapers – to make last week’s exchanges in the House sound like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis debating an obtuse point of literary criticism over pints of bitter with diazepam chasers in an Oxford pub.

But we could live with that. If required, the Civil Contingencies Act is designed to deal with violent uprisings. We’d survive.

So if the central difficulty is finding an individual on whom all the opponents of no deal can agree, the suggestion is this: don’t bother. Don’t even try. Abandon on the alternative PM thing.

Forget inveigling Jo Swinson to renege on never enabling a Jeremy Corbyn premiership even for a few weeks. Leave Margaret Beckett to her caravan. Free Harriet Harman to dream her dreams of the speaker’s chair.

Dispense, for a while, with the post of prime minister – an unprecedented move for an age without precedent, and not necessarily an unpopular one, given the form of the incumbent and his two immediate predecessors – and replace it with a ruling council of equals.

This would have to include Corbyn, Swinson and an apostate Tory, preferably Ken Clarke. It would probably want to be a council of five to include the Westminster leaders of the SNP and Plaid.

Members of the Council of National Unity, or whatever it chose to call itself, could draw lots for the honour of formally requesting the extension from the EU, and alternate at PMQs. They should limit their existence to the three or four months needed for a second referendum.

They should guarantee that the day after, regardless of the result, they would invite Johnson, or his successor as leader of the opposition, to join them in voting for a general election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.

It feels a bit late for anyone to adopt Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high”. No one in this game is soaring above the carnage.

But a unity ruling council would send this message when it is needed most.

When he squeezes the thigh of civil unrest, we cross our legs against his rabble-rousing. When he abuses the memory of a dead woman to widen division, we honour it by sticking together. When he tries to shut down debate, we give a voice to everyone who wants to be heard.

When he limits his vocal output to focus group-tested wolf whistles, we will speak in his place. When he gives in to the devils of his own nature, we will never surrender.