Boris Johnson has decided chaos and self-destruction is a price worth paying – as long as he gets to be in charge This is now the definitive Boris Johnson position. Until next Monday, that is.

I had been waiting for this moment, all along. The moment when Boris Johnson would claim he always wanted a no-deal Brexit and that it is, apparently, what all voters wanted all along as well. This child’s magical thinking is in the nature of the man, it seems; he appears to believe that every thousand-word column he writes for the Daily Telegraph effaces without trace every previous one. This is now the definitive Boris Johnson position. Until next Monday, that is.

But in a world where expertise is devalued and fact assaulted, there are those of us who remember and can research. “Taking back control is a careful change, not a sudden step – we will negotiate the terms of a new deal before we start any legal process to leave”, is what the central leaflet of the official Vote Leave campaign pledged. How did we come from this to Johnson’s suggestion that uncontrolled freefall is somehow being in control, in three short years?

Step by step

Step by step is the answer. It is fascinating to track those mutations. His statements in support of the Single Market before the referendum are numerous and easy to find. “We could construct a relationship with the EU that more closely resembled that of Norway or Switzerland – except that we would be inside the single market council“, he advocated in 2012. “I’d vote to stay in the Single Market. I’m in favour of the Single Market”, in 2013.

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Even in February of 2016, in his now infamous unpublished Telegraph column, while he was still weighing up whether supporting Leave or Remain would better boost his grab for power, he wrote: “This is a market on our doorstep, ready for further exploitation by British firms. The membership fee seems rather small for all that access. Why are we so determined to turn our back on it?”

Before the vote, Johnson was suggesting “the cost of getting out would be virtually nil and the cost of staying in would be very high.” Then in his first post-referendum column in June 2016, he promised: “There will still be intense and intensifying European cooperation and partnership… British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.”

All this, however, depended on him taking the opportunity of the post-referendum melee to get his hands on the prime ministership. As the captain he would, of course, have advocated a sensible course. He would be our National Saviour. Unfortunately, his plan having been foiled by Michael Gove refusing to support him at the last moment, he found himself not the captain, but a mere passenger. All he could do was heckle about the course May was taking, while staying sufficiently fluid about what the right course would be.

Having our cake to Super Canada

From “having our cake and eating it”, to “Super Canada”, to using no-deal preparations as a negotiating tactic, while assuring voters that he was so convinced a deal could be achieved, he would take personal responsibility for any job lost.

Those opportunities for subterfuge had to eventually run out, however. As Britain found itself in an increasingly polarised situation, of May’s deal, no deal or no Brexit, Johnson found himself with only two moves left: admit he was wrong – either for supporting magical cake-eating Brexit in the first place or for torpedoing the PM’s deal – or double down and support no deal.

“What most people in this country want is the Single Market”, he told Andrew Marr in 2012. A no-deal Brexit is “the future that is by some margin preferred by the British public”, he says today. The message from this most accomplished seer of what the British public want at any given moment seems to be: Everyone knew what they voted for and, as soon as I decide what it was everyone voted for, I will let everyone know what it was they voted for.

The idea of compromise has evaporated

What is revealing is how, in his mind, as in May’s, as in so many others driving this process of self-destruction, “the public” has become synonymous with people who voted Leave and the people who voted leave are synonymous with Conservative members. In The Telegraph piece, he claims pollsters are showing the no-deal option “is by some margin preferred by the British public”. I have been unable to find such a poll of the public, though there was a poll of the Tory membership last week.

The millions of people who voted for a soft Brexit, and EFTA deal, or Remain – the vast majority, in fact – do not figure in their thinking. The idea of compromise has evaporated. The notion of “bringing the country together” has been reduced to half the population of this country having to lump the hardest possible Brexit, that was never explained, sold or envisaged. As one audience member put it at a recent Q&A I addressed: “Fifty two per cent has been rounded up to a hundred and 48 per cent has been rounded down to zero”.

It would be interesting to get all these different Borises in a room and let them debate the matter. The result, I suspect, would be the conclusion that whatever suits his political ambition at any given moment is the “right” thing for the country to do. This is a man, part of a group, who would burn this country to the ground, provided they can rule over the ashes. @sturdyalex