When it comes to Brexit, all I can think about now are the lyrics to The Windmills of Your Mind: “Like a circle in a spiral / Like a wheel within a wheel / Never ending or beginning …”

The forthcoming Tory leadership contest is just the latest spiral. Every candidate – whether Kit Malthouse or Boris Johnson – will be outlining their cunning Baldrick-like plans to force the European Union to renegotiate the UK’s withdrawal on 31 October. In practical terms that will be nigh on impossible, in view of both the UK parliament’s timetable and the new European commission not being in place until November. What is also being ignored is that the article 50 agreement that Theresa May signed up to with the 31 October extension clearly states in clause 12: “This extension excludes any re-opening of the withdrawal agreement.”

The candidates will also have us believe they can magically fix the parliamentary arithmetic to garner the support required to get any of their plans through the Commons. They will somehow ensure no hard border in Northern Ireland – even though there is no technology available anywhere in the world that can facilitate this – while the World Trade Organization and the EU have no choice but to ensure the integrity of the single market. Then we come to the biggest lie of all, being spread by the Brexit party and Nigel Farage: that the UK can have a “clean Brexit”. This is patently untrue, and Farage – by no means a foolish man – must know this to be the case. The conclusion must therefore be that he has bigger ambitions than merely getting Britain out of the EU.

Farage and his supporters see Brexit as the cloak to disguise their real ambitions to change our country, our culture and our future. He has aligned himself to people at the heart of the populist movements in the US and across Europe, which are set on putting a torch to the old order and its institutions, infrastructure and politics. Out of that chaos he wants to see nothing less than a survivalist economy, a world of rich asset-strippers, rights and equality opposers and climate deniers.

Yet instead of calling out Farage, the Tory candidates tremble before him. I know from my own campaigning that taking a stand is never easy, and often dangerous, but out-Faraging Farage is a pitiful and craven course of action when the Tory leadership candidates should be focusing on the issues that affect real people’s lives. They should challenge Farage and expose his toxic views on the NHS, schools, rough sleepers, the knife crime epidemic, the pension poverty time bomb, inward investment, foreign policy and the climate crisis.

Quick Guide Tory leadership contenders Show Jeremy Hunt His style is notably technocratic, with few rhetorical flourishes and an emphasis on his consensual approach and long record as a minister, notably during more than five years as health secretary, a traditional graveyard of ministerial careers. Hunt’s attempts to talk up a backstory as an 'underestimated' entrepreneur can fall flat given he is also the son of an admiral and was head boy at Charterhouse. Overall, Hunt’s approach can seem uninspiring and hard to pin down in terms of core beliefs, hence the 'Theresa in trousers' nickname among some Tory MPs – one that is more catchy than accurate (since May herself often wears trousers). In the final round of MP voting Hunt edged out Michael Gove, 77 votes to 75. Boris Johnson Johnson’s progress to Downing Street appeared unstoppable even before an overwhelming victory in the first round of voting among MPs. Most of his colleagues believe it is now all but inevitable that he will be Britain’s next prime minister. His well-disciplined campaign team will continue with their strategy of subjecting him to minimal media exposure, though once the field is narrowed down to two, the final pair will appear in more than a dozen head-to-head hustings for Tory members. The team’s main aim is simply to keep heads down and avoid Johnson creating headlines for the wrong reasons. It may not have worked. Johnson came first in the final round of MP voting with 160 votes.



The very fact Boris Johnson is the favourite to succeed May says everything about how vacuous and morally bankrupt our politics has become. Imagine any other job, with a six-figure salary, where a candidate who was sacked twice for lying – first as a journalist from the Times and then as a politician by Michael Howard – would have made it to the final shortlist. In May’s speech last week she pointed out that compromise is not a dirty word and that the Tory party should be decent and moderate. Given his promises about Brexit – out on 31 October, deal or no deal – Johnson’s bid for the job is incompatible with all such notions.

Vince Cable has talked about forming a grand alliance of remain-supporting parties to oppose Brexit, and if he manages to succeed in that objective before he steps down as leader of the Liberal Democrats, then he will have done us all a great service. But the grim reality is that with so many unscrupulous politicians so close to taking the leadership of the Conservative party, and the office of prime minister, a no-deal Brexit seems more likely than ever before.

They say with addictions such as alcoholism that it’s necessary to hit rock bottom before recovery is possible, and maybe that will be true of Brexit too. A Johnson premiership – with Farage at home and Donald Trump abroad as his allies – will represent rock bottom for all of us. Let no one be in any doubt about how very long recovery would take, and how painful it would be.

• Gina Miller is a transparency and civil rights campaigner and the founder of Remain United