Father’s Day is always a tricky occasion in the Boris Johnson households, so it was perhaps understandable he chose to send along a lectern to represent him at the Channel 4 Tory leadership debate instead. It proved to be an inspired move, because the lectern answered the questions far more directly and honestly than Johnson ever would. If only the lectern had taken his place at the foreign affairs select committee, there’s a good chance Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe would have been released from her Iranian jail by now.

Curiously, everyone but Jeremy Hunt chose to ignore the fact that the odds-on favourite to become the next prime minister was otherwise engaged. And he only appeared to notice about halfway through with a slightly embarrassed, ‘Where’s Boris?’ It was as if someone had shat themselves and everyone was too polite to mention it. Which, come to think of it, was more or less exactly what had happened. Still, at least it gave the others some more airtime. Not that it did many of them much good.

It’s been a good 20 years or so since Michael Gove last did cocaine, but he appeared to be still suffering from the after-effects. Angry, edgy, wired and shouty. Asked to take the first question on how he would win an election against Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn he merely insisted he would win because he was the best, and became increasingly bewildered and tetchy when nobody clapped anything he said. “I’ve put everything on the line,” he later added. Under the circumstances, not the best choice of words.

Things began to turn nasty when the questions turned to Brexit as Gove, Hunt, Sajid Javid and Dominic Raab tried to outdo one another with how hard they were. A contest in which there was only ever going to be one winner. Raab had clearly been briefed to try to remember to smile but it wasn’t long before the anger vein on his forehead was throbbing as the steroids coursed through his veins. When Rory Stewart called him out for being deranged, it looked as if Raab was seconds away from taking an axe to him. And then taking out the entire audience. The new muscular Conservatism.

“I’m an entrepreneur,” Hunt replied irrelevantly to almost every question. He didn’t look much like a businessman. With his Union Jack lapel badge he seemed more like a British Airways senior cabin steward on a long-haul flight. Javid wisely chose not to mention that he’d made a fortune as a banker selling credit default swaps in the run up to the financial crisis, but still tried to pull macho rank. He was a man who got things done even though he couldn’t point to anything he’d actually got done. Needless to say, throughout all this no one was able to explain just how they were going to deliver Brexit. So no one was the wiser about anything.

About an hour in, despite the best efforts of presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy to jolly things along, the debate began to flag rather. Each candidate sobbed gently at the current state of the education, health and social care system, apparently unaware they had been responsible for their decline over the past nine years. Suddenly, the Poirot repeat on ITV3 seemed an attractive option. Thank God for the adverts, which included a trailer for Celebrity Crystal Maze. The comparisons were unmissable. A bunch of chimps would stand more chance of working as a team than the five Tories on show.

Things did perk up with a leftfield question about what each man considered to be his weakness. Gove went first. “Impatience,” he snarled. Along with modesty. He was such a go-getting, high achiever that people had trouble keeping up with him.

“As an entrepreneur,” sobbed Hunt. People sometimes thought he was a pushover, but actually he was a real hardman. Just ask the bloke in seat 27F who hadn’t worn his seat belt. Javid’s confession was that he should have bought the family a dog sooner. Really. Raab twitched shiftily. Now probably wasn’t the time to mention he had multiple convictions for road rage attacks.

At which point, Stewart stole the show. He was frail. He was ignorant. Other people knew more than him. He sometimes changed his mind. Now it wasn’t just Raab who wanted to kill him. All the others did too. Why hadn’t they thought of talking human? The audience gave Stewart a loud round of applause. As indeed they had all night. Rory fluttered his eyelids and smiled bashfully. He’d won the debate hands down, but it would count for little. His electorate wasn’t either the audience or the viewers. It was the other Tory MPs and members and they had long since made up their mind. The lectern had it.



