Boris Johnson’s Steve Bannon connection has put him one scandal away from losing the support of Tory members

More controversy might cause their dormant doubts to erupt. A few more exposed whoppers might force them to ask themselves if they can trust what he says about leaving without a deal

If the prospective prime minister lied about meeting the alt-right strategist, what else is new? (EPA)

If Boris Johnson spent Saturday in a panic about a tape, he was sweating about the wrong one. The recording of domestic events in Camberwell still hasn’t reached the public domain. For that, he will be thankful.

But an earlier video has, and its implications go deeper than a lively exchange of opinions about wine stains and ballistic laptops.

This one stars Steve Bannon, spearhead of the neo-fascistic movement delicately euphemised as “the alt-right”.

Three years after deliberately engineering a political upset by overseeing Donald Trump’s campaign, is Bannon inadvertently about to repeat the trick on behalf of Jeremy Hunt?

In a world on nodding terms with decency, he would. In that utopia, a recording of Bannon discussing his working relationship with Johnson would end this kamikaze mission few miles short of Downing Street.

Pressed about Bannon last summer, Johnson did what comes naturally. He lied with the brazen confidence of the habitual liar who has been caught lying time and again, and survived.

He lied by inventing a quote as a novice hack on The Times, and was dismissed. He lied as a shadow minister, and was dismissed. He lied about what a British national was doing in Iran, and dismissed it as irrelevant to her extended captivity.

If the Stupid Party was willing to blind itself to the character flaw after so many lies, the chances are that the exposure of another won’t prise its eyes open now.

But there’s more and worse than the whopper itself. Underpinning it is a tacit admission of guilt that should terrify the good Tories of the shires and hamlets, but probably won’t.

Asked about the Bannon association almost a year ago, Johnson said: “I’m afraid this is a lefty delusion whose spores continue to breed in the Twittersphere.”

His supporters assure us that the Camberwell contretemps was also a lefty delusion – a conspiracy between Remainer neighbours and a like-minded newspaper to distort a private matter for political ends.

Dismissing Bannon as an anti-Brexit conspirator may be harder. The tape was filmed during Bannon’s jaunt to London to spend time with Nigel Farage and the former employees at Breitbart’s British operation with whom, he says in the recording, Johnson had worked close.

Selflessly, he carved time from his schedule to advise Johnson about his resignation speech after quitting as foreign secretary.

“I’ve been talking to him all weekend about this speech,” says Bannon. “We went back and forth over the text.”

Nothing wrong there. Even the great orators can use a bit of help.

Admittedly, his hero and role model tended to manage on his own. But we can’t all be Churchill, however much we would wish it. No one would blame Johnson for listening to other voices before commanding the attention of the Commons.

So why did he lie, and instruct a spokesperson to lie for him with “any suggestion that Boris is colluding with or taking advice from Mr Bannon (and Nigel Farage) is totally preposterous to the point of conspiracy”?

He did so because he understood the danger to his ambitions if the relationship became public. Or he thought he did.

Even 12 months ago, a connection to the author of Trump’s “Muslim ban” – the not so crypto-anarchist with the intent to unleash chaos to destroy liberal democracy across the world – must have seemed potentially fatal.

For a long time, during the interval between “piccaninnies … with their watermelon smiles” and female Muslim letterbox bank robbers, Johnson hugged multiculturalism close as London’s mayor, and styled himself a modernist One Nation Tory.

He got bravely over that, but not bravely enough to own his reliance on Bannon.

With hindsight, he should have dredged up the courage. The Conservative membership seems unlikely now to suffer a collective fit of the vapours because its darling has been in bed with Bannon.

This aggregation of embarrassments clearly weakens his chances, as the shift in the betting suggests. To be at the wrong end of one “lefty delusion” in a weekend is unfortunate. Two within 24 hours sounds like a klaxon warning the old timers about the iceberg awaiting a Johnson-led party at a general election ahead.

But it probably won’t penetrate their hearing aids sufficiently to propel Hunt to Downing Street. They care only about Brexit, and will not look beyond 31 October.

In so far as the Tory electorate is aware of Bannon, it isn’t as the model for an unusually monstrous Halloween mask. It’s as the Trump guy who colluded with Farage to enable Brexit. If Johnson did the same on the sly, so what? If he lied about it, what else is new?

Another scandal or two in quick succession might cause their dormant doubts to erupt. A few more exposed whoppers might force them to ask themselves if they can trust what he says about leaving without a deal if needs must.

Our New York-born baby Trump could yet exhaust his bespoke version of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue without losing popularity.

So this race isn’t over. But it remains his to lose. He’s doing his best. This once, you can’t fault him for the effort. Yet the bookies still give him an 80 per cent chance of becoming the second pantomime horse to emerge triumphant from the Steve Bannon stable for sons of privilege posing as anti-establishment insurgents.

The race for the Most Prescient Intro of the Year award, on the other hand, is officially over. “As Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie quietly start preparing for the move to Number 10 …” began a piece published on The Article website on Friday afternoon.