Boris Johnson’s vision for the UK is an illusion – by the Brexit deadline, there’ll be no hiding behind it

Editorial: Soon, the prime minister will have to start making more difficult decisions and hard choices. As autumn approaches, the sunny talk about ‘positive energy’ and the jokes about the ‘hamster wheel of doom’ won’t work

A week into his premiership and Boris Johnson has solved the housing crisis. His own, that is, now that he has secured some social housing in central London, complete with a resident cat and a variety of other visitors, some welcome, others less so. His girlfriend Carrie Symonds is reputedly moving in soon, making a first for British political life – a couple in No 10 “living in sin”, though there have, of course, been some notable sinners in situ before the arrival of Mr Johnson. Apparently a dog will be acquired, giving the prime minister a more homely image.

More soberly, we may reflect on the radical shift in the style and substance of government wrought in the few days since we learnt the Queen wondered aloud why anyone would want the job anyway (the first of what may be a series of Johnson-inspired indiscretions). He has sacked most of the May cabinet, with a few of the more defiant souls quitting before he had the pleasure of handing them their cards. He has produced a cabinet that is, at least superficially, the most diverse in British history in Bame terms, but one with a depressingly more uniform outlook and privately educated background. When Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, told the British not to waste the six months grace they had been granted under the Article 50 extension, he probably did not have in mind Jacob Rees-Mogg’s new style guide and the national debate about the use of the Oxford comma.

Far more significant than any individual cabinet appointment has been the arrival of Dominic Cummings, the biggest comeback since Lazarus. This hero, or villain, of the Vote Leave campaign has already made his presence felt, and he is both a symbol and cause of the Johnson government’s embrace of no deal. Whether it is the “million to one” shot described by Mr Johnson, or the “assumption” canvassed by Michael Gove, he has already created some mixed messages and confusion.

The idea, though, is clear, if flawed – that preparing and being seen to be preparing for no deal makes the prospect of a deal that much more likely. It is, in other words, a bluff. Whether it fools Brussels, Dublin, Berlin and Paris is doubtful, no matter how tough the talk and how much taxpayers’ money is blown on Brexit propaganda and futile preparations for an event that cannot, in realty, be prepared for at all. As is often said, it is analogous to someone removing their seat belt in a car and then driving it at maximum speed into a brick wall. The seat belt will not save your life in such an eventuality.

Hence we have now an all-male “war cabinet” – a label given in poor taste – comprising Mr Johnson, Dominic Raab, Mr Gove, Sajid Javid, Geoffrey Cox and Steve Barclay. Alongside them will be a system of daily and weekly meetings, a £100m publicity drive and a prime minister who has said he will not travel to meet EU leaders unless and until they agree to drop the Irish backstop as a precondition.

Whether this adds up to no-deal Brexit or a deal or no Brexit at all depends not just on the willpower of “Mr Brexit”, Michael Gove, and the rest of them; but also on the will of the House of Commons. In the long parliamentary holiday, MPs will have no chance to stop a no-deal Brexit; but when they return in September, the reality of it will be that much closer and that much more terrifying. It is hard to imagine that MPs – a majority of whom do not share the enthusiasm for no deal in the cabinet – will sit idly by.

Mr Johnson is curious in more ways than one. Sometimes he displays sincere liberal instincts. Dropping the immigration target and moving towards an amnesty for illegal immigrants were by far his wisest initiatives in his early days. He has also shown a thoroughly un-Conservative passion for spending public money on grand infrastructure and other projects. In every place he visits he seems eager to please, and to splash the cash: the Northern Powerhouse, the Scottish city challenge, Welsh hill farmers... all beneficiaries of the Johnson largesse. It is rather as if he was mimicking some Roman emperor, beneficently distributing alms to the worthy supplicants who tug at his toga. Other times, notably Brexit, he has upended the May government’s policy of cooperation and conciliation with the EU. She did, after all, achieve the only deal there’s been with the EU, something that will probably evade Mr Johnson. It will not be good enough just to blame the EU for the failure. And the Commons will not permit that failure of policy to mutate into no-deal Brexit – meaning tariffs on our exports and visas for our tourists and business travellers.

He has certainly energised his party, and given it a “Boris boost” as the headline writers have it. His performances in parliament remind the nation of what this cockpit of debate is supposed to be like. Yet his position in parliament remains precarious, and there is little chance he would win a working majority in any pre-Brexit general election (or even afterwards). Jo Swinson, Nicola Sturgeon and Nigel Farage are Mr Johnson’s greatest threats, even if Jeremy Corbyn looks like he is losing the affection of his own followers.

Soon, the loss of another seat to the Liberal Democrats, at Brecon and Radnorshire (as seems certain) will take him close to minority government (even with the support of the capricious Democratic Unionists). Soon, too, Mr Johnson will have to start making some more difficult decisions and hard choices. As autumn approaches, the sunny talk about “positive energy” and the jokes about the “hamster wheel of doom” will seem inappropriate.

Mr Johnson may still, secretly, wonder what he really wants, apart from extending his tenure at No 10 for as long as possible. He’d like us to believe in Britain, believe in Boris, and believe that he will be able to solve everything from the UK’s space programme to the social care crisis and the climate emergency, as well as Brexit, the economy and keeping Scotland and Northern Ireland inside the UK. Mr Johnson, a big personality with big ideas, wants to make Britain the best country in the world to live in by 2050. It would be nice to know exactly how that is going to happen.