Now that Boris Johnson has decisively won the first round of the contest among Tory MPs, and is the runaway favourite to win among the membership, we have to take seriously the prospect of a Johnson premiership. In this strange tribal mating contest, in which those who have the biggest and most colourful tail feathers to shake do best, he will be hard to beat.

There are two things that, so far, define the Johnson pitch. One is a stonking great tax cut for higher-rate taxpayers, by means of raising the higher-rate threshold, from £50,000 to £80,000. On its own, when fully in place, that would cost £20bn a year, but about half would be clawed back by increasing the national insurance (NI) ceiling. People