Look how they do it. The Tory party, its fellow travellers, its mighty backers, all with a deep financial interest in keeping Conservatives in power, gather round as their new leader emerges from that tiny group of elderly white male selectors. See the wagons circling. Forget any alarm they ever expressed about a Boris Johnson prime ministership. Come the day, watch them pay homage to their latest protector from the red peril.

Even though none, not one, during the referendum mentioned the remotest possibility of a no-deal Brexit, almost all the Tory tribe are ready to pretend this is now the true “will of the people”, singing in blue harmony. Any doubters are whipped in by the great British press foghorn – 80% Tory-backing.

The demise of the newspaper industry has been much exaggerated: the old press barons are still the loudest mouthpieces of the nation. Murdoch of the Times, Sunday Times and Sun; Rothermere of the Mail; the Barclay brothers of the Telegraph. These frame the political agenda and sway the broadcasters’ news lists. All these now salute Johnson.

The wonder is not that this is such a Conservative country, or that most of my life has been ruled by Tory governments, but that Labour ever breaks through this sound barrier – Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair the only winners in three-quarters of a century. Since the days of Beaverbrook and Northcliffe, this country has suffered exceptionally from the blight of an extreme rightwing press ownership. Northcliffe, asked on his deathbed for his Daily Mail winning formula, said: “I give my readers a daily hate.” That rightist hate, infecting all these titles, morphed into hate for the European Union, with Johnson’s notorious stint as Brussels correspondent for the Telegraph setting a fashion for Europhobic lies from the British press.

Here’s the Telegraph editorial’s unsurprising endorsement of their columnist: “Johnson is a million miles away from the sub-Trumpian dinosaur his critics bizarrely characterise him as. He is a liberal. His politics come from goodwill.” The Sunday Telegraph follows on: “Mr Johnson believes in Brexit but also in the greatness of this nation and what it is capable of. We urge readers with a vote to support him.”

The Daily Mail: “Even Mr Johnson’s detractors concede that he radiates energy. He positively fizzes with ideas, promising to propel the country to new heights of prosperity, inventiveness and social cohesion.” The Express: “Britain will boom under Boris”. Even the London Evening Standard, edited by former Johnson enemy and remainer George Osborne, kowtows in its editorial to its Russian oligarch owner, Evgeny Lebedev: “We believe if there’s one of these candidates who can give Britain back its mojo, it’s BoJo.” Then comes Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, “Mr Johnson needs a fair wind and he will get it from us,” and the Sun, “The country is ready for a new, confident leader speaking his mind.”

By now we should be used to Murdoch’s way with power: he always backs the likely winner to maximise his manipulative power, so he can boast, “It’s the Sun wot won it”. Remember, he swung to back Blair, but only after Blair became the certain victor and Murdoch had screwed all manner of compromises out of him.

George Osborne with Boris Johnson at Great Ormond Street hospital in 2015. Photograph: Frank Augstein/PA

So why was I still capable of being even mildly shocked by the Times’s Johnson endorsement (“The Tories should back the candidate with the best chance of delivering Brexit, uniting the country and defeating Jeremy Corbyn. That is Boris Johnson”)? Because Times columnists have delivered devastating demolitions of Johnson. Here’s David Aaronovitch: “Can any of us believe a word Boris says?” Matthew Parris has recently been at his most excoriating: “Impostors almost always know they are impostors, and Mr Johnson is nothing if not self-aware. I diagnose here a man who, when the sound of cheering, ringing in his ears, begins to fade, knows what thin ice he’s on, and how shallow is the politics beneath the dazzling polish of the surface.” On Johnson’s refusal to rule out ignoring or proroguing parliament he wrote: “This would be nuclear, a coup against representative democracy and a breach of our unwritten constitution. This way, infamy lies. Gangrene would follow such an amputation. Don’t even think about it.” But to work for Murdoch is to suck up the dishonour. Conservatives and their press will always get in line when it comes to facing the Labour enemy.

As the tide goes out on this democratic sham, we now get to see how many Tories are swimming naked of all decency. Remainers, passionate pro-Europeans, sensible pragmatists, people who over a lifetime have earned a measure of respect across parliament, tear off their clothes of respectability to abase themselves in pursuit of ... what? A job? Influence? A brief spot under the Johnson artificial sun ray lamp?

I have watched Damian Green at sparsely attended Tory conference fringe meetings, together with Anna Soubry, nobly upholding the pro-European cause with great eloquence and passion. Soubry honourably broke with her party, but Green has gone grovelling to Johnson on television, oozing with unseemly sycophancy. Andrew Mitchell is another I have been shocked to see ardently defending the likely winner, along with swiveller Matt Hancock and a long procession of other deplorables joining this nationalist, protectionist, isolationist Brexit movement. Jeremy Hunt’s peregrination from remainer to no-dealer has been horrible to watch.

As erstwhile moderates creep for the patronage of their new master, real harm is done. Whoever leaked the internal Foreign Office emails from ambassador Kim Darroch, giving his unsurprising but embarrassing analysis of the Donald Trump presidency, can only have been motivated by desire to curry favour with Johnson. Minister, special adviser or (less likely) official seeking preferment, the only benefit is to give Johnson a free hand in appointing someone to better please the court of Trump when post-Brexit Britain is in desperate need of some pretence of a US trade deal. This is no whistleblowing courage, but a dagger in the heart of the idea of a civil service free to speak truth to power.

The handful of brave anti-Boris resisters shine a harsh spotlight on the moral collapse of so many Tory MPs who certainly know what a disaster no deal – or any Brexit – will be. The Johnson team is reported to be on hawklike “rebellion watch”: rebels will be marked for life. Dominic Grieve, Kenneth Clarke, David Gauke, Rory Stewart, Sam Gyimah, Ruth Davidson and other valiants lead what may be 30 resisters – heroes all who may yet save the country.

In the land of unicorns, does it help them to have the latest alarming facts bolstering their cause? The Irish government warns that no deal is now very likely: alternatives to the backstop are leprechauns. Business investment has fallen to its lowest since the crash, with growth after no deal predicted at 0.3% for 2020. Some 62% of finance chiefs expect to cut back hiring after Brexit. The trade deficit has soared alarmingly in a year. Construction has had its worst plunge since the crash, manufacturing has fallen, with the service sector torpid. Lights are going out over the British economy – and we haven’t even left yet. But the natural party of government, of business, of stability, of conservatism, is backing Johnson.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist