It could just have been overconfidence. More likely it was a white flag. A giving in to the inevitable. For the final head-to-head debate in the Tory leadership race, Team Hunt hadn’t sent a single MP out into the spin room to explain why their man was about to win. Not even Liam Fox, who bizarrely had managed to out fact-check Boris Johnson on the status of a UK-US trade deal that very morning. It’s come to something when the country depends on the international trade secretary – for the next week at least – as a voice of sanity.

For Team Boris, Dominic Raab was looking every bit like a man who won’t be taking public transport for much longer. The shiny ministerial limo awaits. Gone was the pent-up anger of his own failed leadership bid. The bulging neck veins of Captain Psycho had given way to Smiley Dom. The man whose road rage convictions are now spent and on whom no one has yet pinned any unsolved murders.

This was a man happy in his own skin. A politician of hitherto hidden charm. Pleased to have chosen the winning side. Delighted his no-deal Brexit was now mainstream Conservative policy. As Amber Rudd was now desperate to phone in and confirm. When she’d said a no-deal Brexit would be a disaster what she had really meant was that it would be an unmitigated success.

This was the Sun-Talk Radio debate and Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn laid down a few ground rules for Johnson and Hunt. The first of which was that there should be no repeat of last week’s ITV debates when both men had talked over each other and Julie Etchingham. Boris and Jeremy nodded furiously. This time there were no woman involved so there would be no need to talk over anyone.

“Pifflepafflewifflewaffle,” Boris began in his by now well-rehearsed opening patter. Optimism, mojo, complete bollocks. That’s what the country was crying out for. Hunt just looked washed out. He claimed to be passionate, but he looked to be of all passion spent. The Colonel Kurtz Doll had been consigned to the toy box. All that was left was an unwanted Ken. Barbie’s wallflower.

Brexit dominated the first 45 minutes and as expected neither man had any answers. But then a lack of realism has been the default position of both Boris and Hunt throughout and they weren’t about to change now. Brexit was something that would happen providing you believed in it enough. What had been missing was someone who would look the EU in the eyes and tell them we were mad and self-destructive enough to trash the entire country to get things done. Of course there would be casualties along the way, but true patriotic Brits should be prepared to lay down their lives so that everyone who survived could be made poorer.

On and on the nonsense went. Both men unilaterally ditched the Northern Ireland backstop and put their faith in alternative border technologies that did not yet exist. Boris even promised to take back control by increasing immigration. Not exactly what many Brexiters had voted for, but trust in politics is now so low that no one really cares what anyone says. Coherence is a state to which no one now even aspires. Lying is now truth.

Johnson was just as confused on a trade deal with the US. This time he had at least read clause 5(c) of Gatt 24 but he still hadn’t bothered to mug up on clause 5(d). Details, details. Asked to condemn President Trump’s tweets about four Democrat congresswomen, Hunt said that his three children were half-Chinese. Boris avoided talking about his children. Mainly because he can’t always remember how many he has. Or what their nationalities might be. Both men couldn’t bring themselves to say what they thought was racist about the racist tweet. That’s the strong type of leadership that’s on offer. Britain standing up to the US by lying down.

There were a few sparks in the remainder of the 90 minutes, but mostly a truce appeared to have been called. No major blue-on-blue attacks. Hunt appears to have accepted the game is up – he couldn’t even be bothered to mention he was an entrepreneur – and is now just angling to remain in cabinet. And it looked to have paid off as Boris promised Hunt one of the top four jobs. Only it turned out that Boris’s idea of a top four job was as night porter because within minutes of handing Hunt his current job back he withdrew the offer. Johnson is nothing if not reliably untrustworthy.

Shortly before the contest ended with Boris relaxing into a few gags – his sense of entitlement is now complete – Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel swept into the spin room to declare how Johnson had easily won the debate they hadn’t even heard. Boris isn’t the only MP in Westminster to be measuring up the curtains. It will be Boris. And it will almost certainly be a disaster. Still, it’s only the little people who will suffer. And Brexit always has been about collateral damage.