Sam Gyimah was one of the purged. He’d been warned that if he supported a bill to prevent a no-deal Brexit, his political career in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party would be dead. But like 20 other terminated Tories, he put country before career. “No deal would be catastrophic,” he told me. “The Boris project is coming off the rails.”

In just six weeks as Britain’s leader, Johnson has purged, and prorogued, and pontificated, and postured, and pronounced plenty of do-or-die piffle (it looks like die right now). He has lost his majority of one, his brother Jo, Winston Churchill’s grandson, the good will of many Tories and several votes in the House of Commons. As for “the people,” whom he claims to represent, Johnson never had them, having been elected by 92,153 members of his own party, most of them at the far end of actuarial tables. Hubris, thy name is Boris.

Yes, a grotesque hubris for Johnson, with no legitimacy, to think that he can railroad Britain out of the European Union on Oct. 31 — the most consequential political step in decades, precipitating mayhem in industrial supply chains, airports, ports and hospitals, as well as the possible breakup of the United Kingdom.

But the people voted for this in the 2016 referendum! No, they did not. They voted for the smooth, orderly exit promised by Johnson and his ilk. Chaos at Calais was not on the Brexiteers’ make-believe menu. There is no evidence, none, that a majority of “the people” want Johnson’s no-deal Brexit.