Boris Johnson dodged the Channel 4 debate bullet – but he’ll have to answer questions soon whether he likes it or not

It will do the leadership frontrunner no good if he doesn’t even make a passing attempt to win support in the country, and he can’t do so unless he responds to the many burning questions the electorate has

The leadership frontrunner can’t hide forever (EPA)

Boris Johnson appears such a foregone conclusion as Britain’s next prime minister that it calls to mind a phrase Roy Jenkins once used about Tony Blair when the then young Labour leader of the opposition also looked unassailable on his path to power.

Mr Johnson today “is like a man carrying a priceless vase of Chinese porcelain across a slippery floor”. But boorish, careless, gaffe-prone Mr Johnson is the last person who should be entrusted with such a task. He knows it. Hence his fear of making the tiniest slip. Hence his fear of facing critics or opponents on television. The premiership is his to lose.

So the man who has spent so much of his career “building profile” in the media has gone to ground. Where he would once happily josh with Paul Merton and Ian Hislop about cocaine and icing sugar, he is now entirely absent. Mr Johnson is the invisible man, a political construct that dare not be interrogated, a man with such a poor record of private integrity it cannot be subjected to the slightest scrutiny. He is, to recycle another old phrase, frit.

Channel 4’s TV debate was thus very much a case of Hamlet without the prince. The broadcaster left an empty podium almost in memoriam, but only Jeremy Hunt made much of Mr Johnson going Awol. Dominic Raab was left as a sort of proxy Boris punchbag. This was unsatisfactory for all concerned.

Mr Johnson didn't turn up, even though, in the context of the Sky News campaign for election leaders debates, he thought it essential for such exposure of potential premiers to questioning, now he is now silent and absent.

Mr Johnson will submit himself to a rather different format, believed safer, the BBC has offered involving viewers’ questions, but it will lack the essential cut and thrust of argument with his peer group. Even with Emily Maitlis interjecting, it may not succeed in imposing the rigorous, sustained questioning he needs. At his launch press conference, the six unconnected questions posed by political correspondents were easily batted away.

The question is: when will this cowardly performance turn into a negative? The 160,000 or so Conservative members who make up this “selectorate” should care if their next leader isn’t tough enough to face Andrew Marr or Kay Burley for half an hour. They should have cause for concern if potential Tory voters – and there are few enough – think Mr Johnson is so flaky he can’t answer straight questions, and so has to hide himself away with his spin doctors.

When does Brand Boris, the outspoken champion of Tory values, become compromised by him flunking challenges and running away? How will he do against Macron and Barnier when he can’t face Jon Snow or Mishal Husain?

He has a lot to hide. His record speaks to a certain recklessness in his life, the instincts of a gambler. He needs especially to be asked about his failures over Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Her fresh hunger strike should and will haunt Mr Johnson throughout this campaign – and may yet destroy it.

He should be probed about wasted money in London – the buses, the garden bridge, the water cannon. He should be more forthcoming about bizarre allegations about hit men. The former Tory MP Matthew Parris wants to know how many children he has. The whole country deserves to learn what precisely his Brexit plan amounts to, whether we will have another general election, and what damage will be inflicted by a no-deal Brexit. All this is reasonable, and Mr Johnson makes himself look shifty by ducking the challenges.

Maybe a big character such as Mr Johnson is needed after the ultra-cautious Theresa May (though the one punt she did take, on a snap election, proved ruinous). It might be that he will make a better job of things than his predecessors, and the psychodramas will end. There is little evidence for that, but clearly the Tory activists are preparing to take a gamble on it themselves, on behalf of the electorate as a whole. That too feels very wrong and undemocratic.

Putting the question of party leadership to party members in the two main parties was never designed to choose a prime minister. The usual dynamic, as it has proved, is that this is the usual method to choose a leader of the opposition. On the two recent occasions there has been a change of premier in power – Tony Blair to Gordon Brown and David Cameron to Theresa May – there was a coronation not an election. Yet a moment such as this was always going to arise, either when a prime minister has to resign, unexpectedly dies or is incapacitated in office.

For many years it was a matter only for MPs. Before 1965 the Conservatives didn’t even have that – choosing their new leaders, often enough prime ministers too, they “emerged” by consensus among the “magic circle” at the top of the party, and the King or Queen sent for them.

All these systems had their disadvantages, and the present Conservative rules are a compromise; but the “democratic” choice of a new premier via one-member-one-vote in one party does feel increasingly absurd and illegitimate.

If there is, say, an 80 per cent turnout and Mr Johnson wins 80 per cent of the votes among the maximum estimated Conservative membership, then he will enjoy a “mandate” of about 100,000 votes. That has to be set against the 32 million votes cast at the last general election. It will do Mr Johnson no good if he doesn’t even make a passing attempt to win support in the country.

Sooner or later Mr Johnson will have to answer questions. Every week at prime minister’s questions, for example, and in due course at the next general election. He needs to show he can do it. Eventually the old adage will catch up with him: you can run but you can’t hide.