MPs are in genuine fear for their lives, and Boris Johnson is capitalising on it

The prime minister has refused several opportunities to atone for his outrageous words. Instead, he has doubled down on them

On Wednesday night, by the time Boris Johnson said his instantly infamous words, that “the best way to honour of the memory of Jo Cox was to get Brexit done,” he had been facing questions over the despatch box for more than two hours.

He had flown overnight from New York, on a trip that turned into a chaotic mess when the Supreme Court quietly dropped a bomb on it.

Tracy Brabin, Jo Cox’s replacement as the MP for Batley and Spen was asking him to moderate his language, and not resort to terms like “surrender” and “betrayal,” that toxify politics and make MPs, especially women MPs, feel less safe.

He had been facing questions for a long, long time by this point. I have watched on countless occasions when ministers stand at the despatch box and must find some words to respond to questions that are not questions at all, but statements, comments. Or to have to find new ways to respond to dozens upon dozens of variations of the same question.

More often than not, they find themselves making some sort of vague, half-baked linguistic link between the words they have been asked, and the wider point they seek to make.

And for a moment, it looked like this is what had happened here. That though the words Johnson said were so outrageous, all he had really meant was: “Insert question here, Jo Cox, I am exhausted, murble burble, Get Brexit Done.”

The outrage that followed was instant, and it was real, both in the chamber and online. Calmer, more regular Westminster watchers, turned to one another and said, “He will regret that” or “He will have to apologise".

That is the fair and measured response. That is the way through which the prime minister can be given the benefit of the doubt.

To have said, at that stage, that these cheap words by a very tired person, who’d been going at it for too long, were sufficient to talk of a deliberate strategy of sowing hatred and division would have been to go too far.

So, really, it is Thursday morning’s behaviour that is the actual disgrace. Because the prime minister does not regret his words. After a good night’s sleep, his official spokesperson had been instructed to tell journalists that, “The prime minister does not regret what he said.”

The prime minister was requested to come to the House of Commons to answer an urgent question by the Labour MP, Jess Philips, on the language he had used. Not only did he send a very junior minister to have to face down these impossible questions on his behalf, but instead, he told his own MPs at a morning meeting: “Labour are trying to drive us off the word surrender because they know it is cutting through.”

In an hour of questions, MPs from all parties – Labour, Lib Dem, SNP, Conservative and ex-Conservative – wanted to know whether the language used by the prime minister amounted to a deliberate strategy of division and hatred.

Kevin Foster, a decent enough sort who has been a junior minister in the Cabinet Office for all of two months, had been despatched to answer them. (Yesterday, Matt Warman, a similarly recently appointed and low-ranking minister, had had to stand in the same spot, and deal with questions about the prime minister’s “technology lessons”.)

He did his best, but the prime minister had, through his actions, already made his position clear. In the morning, “government sources” had been texting various Westminster journalists with quotes given under the condition of anonymity, full of phrases like “actions have consequences” that are routinely used by Dominic Cummings.

One especially hilarious source told Buzzfeed that he had named his imaginary dog “Labour backs the Surrender Bill” and that he had been “running around east London shouting it. I hope no one is too offended” Who are we to question such epic hilarity? And who are we to doubt that such strategic brilliance will surely convert enough passers-by to win the Conservatives their first seat in east London in more than fifty years?

The answer to Philips’s question had already been made known, and she knew it too.

“The use of language yesterday and over the past few weeks such as the surrender bill, such as invoking the war, such as betrayal and treachery, it has clearly been tested, and workshopped and worked up and entirely designed to inflame hatred and division.

“I get it, it works, it is working.

“It is not sincere, it is totally planned, it is completely and utterly a strategy designed by somebody to harm and cause hatred in our country.”

She asked for an apology. No apology came, or will come.

Johnson is already ready for a fully populist election, fought with all the same vicious fear and loathing as the 2016 referendum. He will seek to turn the people against parliament, and from a starting point whole orders of magnitude more febrile than it has ever been before.

The anger that will greet it will not be, to use Jacob Rees-Mogg’s current bon mot, "confected". Many MPs make no secret that they fear for their lives. There is still time to draw back from the brink. But do not imagine for a second that Johnson will do it.