Apart from the rude ones, there is only one word for the fact Theresa May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy has been made a board member of the organising committee of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Inevitable. This is simply how stuff works. I’m only sorry our denuded empire means Nick can’t be given an Indian province or something. Or at least a go on Malaya.

The ways Timothy’s latest appointment were inevitable are many and various, and we’ll come to them shortly. But we must begin with a recap of how we got here. Because, of course, Nick wasn’t always the crayonner of red lines, the taxer of dementia, the shitter of the electoral bed. And, in one potential timeline, the parliamentary-maths-destroyer that ends up causing no-deal Brexit.

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Not really that long ago in the scheme of things, Nick was Theresa May’s special adviser in the Home Office, where they ran the hostile environment policy that led to the Windrush scandal. In the 2016 EU referendum campaign, he was an avowed leaver. Who knows whether it was his counsel that caused May to refuse to meaningfully surface to fight for Remain, to the point where frustrated campaign coordinators nicknamed her “Submarine May”. But fortuitously, Nick would soon be in No 10 as her joint chief of staff, where he squandered the height of May’s powers to entrench division rather than heal it, by writing her 2016 conference Citizens of Nowhere speech.

Within months, Article 50 was triggered, apparently without May having a clue what she wanted, let alone the cabinet, followed by Timothy shaping the red lines which have so hamstrung her during the Brexit negotiations. He pushed her to call an election, where his dementia tax turned out to be a six-pointer. For Labour.

He will spend his career walking into positions that attempt to 'harness his talents' or speak to his skillset'

Having resigned after the majority was lost, Nick’s spell in the political wilderness lasted a full seven weeks, during which he devoted himself to helping the communities his balls-up might reasonably be expected to do over. No, wait – I’ve just checked, and apparently he went on his holibobs instead. On his return, he landed two national newspaper columns: one in the Telegraph (initially run under the auto-savaging banner “Ways To Win”), and one in the Sun. Despite these platforms, people began to notice a thing about Nick, which was that he was completely, sensationally, historically unable to acknowledge his role in the political shitstorm that was beginning to engulf the UK.

So that’s the potted history. And I think you can see that Nick Timothy was, obviously, absolutely destined to pop up in the blazer class of British sport in due course. When asked about his qualifications, I hope he just looked at the appointments panel and went: “Turn on the rolling news.” And as they stared at the 24-hour Brexit crisis, Nick whooped: “THAT’s my CV, baby!”

But the latter is just a fantasy sequence, obviously. We know how government (and sports governance) appointments work. The key question at times like this is: “Now, do we know anyone like us, but who’s from … hang on, where is it again? … Ah yes, ‘Birmingham’” But of course! There’s Nick Timothy. Blah-blah clever guy. Blah-blah could-do-something-interesting.”

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As for any previous pronouncements on sport Nick may have made, an archive trawl throws up the odd delight, such as: “I am not altogether comfortable with our participation in the Ryder Cup team.” He is at least a genuine Aston Villa fan, unlike David Cameron, who I once saw patronise some electrical apprentices with a suffering-fan joke about his club one day winning “the cup”. “Well, I can dream, can’t I?” he grinned ruefully, clearly unaware that Villa were in the FA Cup semi-finals at the time, and within a fortnight would have gone through to the final.

The following year, alas, Villa were relegated, and Nick used that moment to pen his most far-reaching sporting thesis to date. “Their lack of commitment on the pitch has been matched only by their arrogance off it,” he observed. High praise. Nick went on to lambast the Villa players for not “showing contrition for their role in the club’s demise”. If the retrospective irony of that were not already too sledgehammer, he then inquired rhetorically: “So what can this sorry story teach us about politics?”

Tell us when you find out, buddy. The real politics/sports governance lesson is that both are mostly chumocracies which find jobs for chaps who have repeatedly proved their inadequacies. Like a certain type of manager or useless administrator, Timothy will spend the rest of his career walking into positions that attempt to “harness his talents” or “speak to his skillset”. These sort of characters are somehow judged too big to fail.

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The Windrush scandal reminded us that if you lose one form, you can lose your cancer treatment and even your liberty. But if you lose a generation’s forms, you can end up prime minister. Nick Timothy’s journey reminds us of something similar. As one critic wrote of the relentless advance of the Widmerpool character in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time novels, he represented “what [Powell] had over the years come to consider inevitable”. More than 75 years after they were begun, he still does.

When I heard the news of Timothy’s Commonwealth Games gig, I immediately began anticipating his 2023 self-exculpatory newspaper columns, in which he explained some notional administration cock-up. But then I realised that I was still thinking too small. By that stage, of course, he will have moved on to the chairmanship of the Football Association.