If Boris backslides on his tough position, both he and his party are done

Nigel Farage has offered the Tory Party a “non-aggression pact” for the surely soon-forthcoming general election. We are told that “senior Tory sources” have dismissed the prospects of any such pact, declaring Nigel Farage not a “fit and proper person” for any role in government.

Now of course “senior Tory sources” doesn’t have to mean anyone on Team Boris. After all, half the Tory MPs voted against him in the recent leadership campaign, and several members of his Cabinet literally stood against him themselves. We might not, for example, want to treat the comments of a “senior Tory source” as indicative of his own thinking.

Nonetheless, there certainly has been a certain sort of Tory Leaver who in the past used to attempt to distance themselves from Farage. During the early 2010s there was even the “Farage paradox” that, the better Ukip did in the opinion polls, the lower support for leaving the EU became.

During the EU referendum there was quite a bitter fight to be the designated official Leave campaign, and many mainstream Leavers continue to believe that if the Farage campaign had won that designation, Remain would have won the referendum easily.