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Boris Johnson will enter 10 Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister between 3pm and 4pm on Wednesday afternoon - just as I did 12 years ago.

He will have come from a trip up and down the Mall tracked by helicopters and his first audience as Prime Minister at Buckingham Palace with the Queen.

Contrary to belief, they will not kiss hands - they’ll simply shake hands.

If he follows the convention of previous PMs, he will seize the chance a waiting world media offers to set out his new government's mission with a few words from the steps of Downing Street.

(Image: PA)

As the black door is shut behind him, he will be greeted by the hundred or so civil servants who work there and who will line the long passage way to the tiny small ground floor office – next to the cabinet room – that most recent PMs have occupied.

With MPs just about to sign off for five weeks of summer holidays the new PM will want to hit the ground running.

And within a few seconds of arriving, he will be taking a multitude of telephone calls from world leaders congratulating him on his new post.

It’s a long-established ritual - and a few hours earlier Theresa May will have made her last calls to the very same world leaders she’s been dealing with for three years.

Watchers will be checking who he chooses to phone first – President Trump, Germany’s Angela Merkel or France’s Emmanuel Macron and who – possibly President Putin – is at the bottom of the list.

But this time the calls will involve more than the usual uncontroversial warm words of welcome.

Serious business will have to start from that first hour.

When he talks to the new president of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyden, he will already be in a negotiation.

(Image: REUTERS)

And because the next three months are going to be non-stop on Brexit, he might be well advised to phone the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, whose support he is going to need if ever he is to change European minds.

Events he cannot anticipate may throw him off course.

Within a few hours in 2007, I was dealing with the London and Glasgow bombing - and at this moment no one can predict what’s going to happen with Iran, Hong Kong or what any tweet of President Trump will incite.

But his stated No 1 priority number from day one – the success or failure of which will determine the fate of his Prime Ministership – is to remove the Irish backstop from the EU withdrawal agreement that Mrs May and her cabinet have already signed.

To win the Conservative leadership the Johnson clarion call has been a European exit on 31st October – just 100 days from now – with or without a deal.

But Boris’ problem is that his most important civil servant adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, has set out all the reasons a No Deal exit has to be avoided at all costs.

Almost immediately the new Prime Minister will have to explain why he is ignoring Sir Mark’s advice that a No Deal exit at Halloween means holds ups at the ports, pile ups on our motorways a declining pound, and food price hikes of around 10 per cent.

He will have to explain why he is pushing Britain off the cliff on 31st October in the full knowledge of advice that components will take far longer to get through to our car, pharmaceutical and other factories - and that a recession is almost inevitable.

(Image: Jeff J Mitchell)

He will have to explain why he is ignoring a Department of Health warning that, despite all their preparations, vital medical drugs upon which lives depend may be held up at Customs and simply not get through in time to save lives.

And if he persists in his Tory election promise to withhold millions of our European Union dues, he will have to explain why the UK is declaring what will be viewed as an economic war on our neighbours.

Not to leave immediately, say the Brexiteers, is a betrayal of Britain and they claim that a No deal Brexit on October 31st is the ultimate in a patriotic act .

But the new PM will have to explain why ,with so manufacturing and service jobs at risk the 31st October cliff edge is not just a self-inflected wound – an act of economic self-harm that runs wholly counter to our national economic interests.

He may be right that No Deal is being demanded by the Tory Party membership but they represent fewer people than voted for Ed Balls on Strictly Come Dancing.

And by 2:1, according to the new HOPE not Hate polling of the British public, voters who had a view on it thinks our economy, their family’s financial prospects, incoming investment and even our fight against terrorism will fare worse if we are pushed over the cliff edge on 31st October.

(Image: Dan Kitwood)

A new petition that can be signed here has already received more than 100,000 signatures as people wake up to the calamitous consequences of a No Deal.

As the Cabinet Secretary has said, it’s not just the fate of our Union with Northern Ireland that is at issue – but the fate of the Union with Scotland now hangs in the balance.

Such are the risks he is taking that it looks as if his ambition is less to be the 55th prime Minister of the UK than the first Prime Minister of England.

Unlike the changing of the guard when a new leader takes office in America, when about 5,000 jobs change hands, just about 100 or so new people will move in – new cabinet members, new advisers and the new political team at Downing Street.

It is Boris Johnson’s choice of his own political staff that will show how he plans to govern.

(Image: PA)

If as is predicted, he brings in the henchman of Lynton Crosby – the electoral guru who specialises in Trump-style political attacks – then we will know we are in for months of negative campaigning – targeting the so called ‘enemies of the people’ from immigrants to anyone with the word ‘European’ in their job title – creating a a more and more polarised Britain.

We could even be in for a repeat of the 2015 election when, on Crosby’s advice, David Cameron whipped up English nationalism against Scotland with his claim that Scottish nationalists would control an Ed Miliband government.

In the national interest, I and millions will want to wish the new Prime Minister well

But while most of us want to find ways in which the country can reunite after the bitter conflicts of Brexit, I fear that a Boris‘ No deal Brexit could divide us even further.