It is strangely fitting that Boris Johnson’s downfall, if downfall it is, should have been brought about by a jailbird and an aficionado of tractor porn.

The PM’s political career has always had the air of comic fiction about it. As if it were a novel authored by a witty columnist like, well, Boris Johnson.

The biggest anti-Tory swing in history, according to the BBC, came in Tiverton and Honiton where the sitting MP Neil Parish had resigned after watching pornography in the Commons Chamber. The former Tory MP for Wakefield, Imran Khan, is serving a sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage boy. No, you really couldn’t make this stuff up.

Following the lurid revelations of partygate and the drinking culture in Number 10, what was any respectable voter to do other than vote for the other lot – whoever they happened to be. Or not vote at all as was the case in Wakefield, the red-wall seat where turnout fell from 66 per cent to 39%.

Voter disgust seems to have been the overriding factor in both by-elections rather than actual enthusiasm for the Leader of the Opposition. As the Oracle of Strathclyde, John Curtice, put it, this was less a vote for Keir Starmer as a vote against Boris Johnson. It was not grounds to expect a Labour victory in the next General Election. Starmer’s enemies in his own party have taken this as a moral defeat.

Immediate exit

INDEED, these by-elections will probably be remembered not for the results themselves but because of the immediate aftermath: the shock resignation of the Tory Party chairman. Et tu, Dowden

He’s the guy whose job it is to traipse through the TV and radio studios pretending that everything is fine and dandy even as the ship disappears beneath the waves. He couldn’t do it. “Someone has to take responsibility,” he said pointing a thinly-disguised finger at the Prime Minister.

There seemed a real chance over the weekend that there might be a palace coup. Boris Johnson was conveniently at the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting in Kigali trying to persuade the Prince of Wales that sending illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda is not “appalling”.

What better time for the Tory Cabinet to oust Johnson, shoot his palace guards, and place Carrie under house arrest? They could have installed a provisional government in Number 10 and told the Prime Minister to seek exile in Rwanda to see how he likes it.

The Conservatives seem too addled to do anything so coherent as change their leader. The Tory rebels had shot their load prematurely. Why they staged their vote of confidence before, rather than after, these highly predictable by-election defeats will remain one of the great mysteries of the times. The rebels are belatedly trying to change the rules to force another vote.

Equally, why have they not united behind a credible alternative leader? If, as the Tory MP Roger Gale insists, there is no shortage of Cabinet members with the right stuff, why has none of them come forward?

The name game

OF course, Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Hunt or whoever could not declare their candidature before a campaign has started – though Hunt has made no secret of his eagerness. But that’s irrelevant. MPs and dissident ministers have myriad ways to telegraph to the party and the nation that so-and-so is in the running.

Oliver Dowden’s resignation should have been the equivalent of the resignation of the Tory Chancellor Geoffrey Howe in 1990. That sealed the fate of Margaret Thatcher.

Ministers, led by Kenneth Clarke, trooped into her office and told the most successful Tory PM in 50 years that the game was up. This was after she’d won a leadership ballot by a similarly narrow margin to Johnson’s in last month’s confidence vote. Heavyweights like Michael Heseltine had election machines ready. No-one of his stature seems available today.

If Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers are waiting for the PM to do the decent thing and resign they could be in for a long wait. This is not a politician who does decent things. Boris Johnson is the most tenacious political limpet in modern history.

Not even the Supreme Court could dislodge him in in 2019. Nor could accusations that he had staged “a coup” by proroguing parliament. The media roasted him as racist and xenophobe, a British Trump.

Yet he went on to win a near landslide only a few months later. He undoubtedly believes he can do it again. Johnson’s greatest asset, his self-confidence, has turned into the Tories’ curse. Unable to resolve their leadership dilemma the party has acquired a kind of death wish.

You can hear it in the voices of Tory spokespeople in media interviews.

After 13 tempestuous years in government they are divided, confused, unable to remember what they are there for.

Identity crisis

ARE they for sound money or high spending? Tax cuts or tax hikes? Mending fences with Europe or intensifying hostilities? Are they net-zero Green or petrol Blue?

Hardline Tory policies like the Bill of Rights, sending illegals to Rwanda, and outlawing strikes aren’t cutting through. There’s too much economic noise and it’s not clear that voters feel strongly about the rail unions.

The right has no presence on social media where many voters, especially the young, get their news and views.

Boris Johnson became leader, and then Prime Minister, to “Get Brexit Done”. But now it’s done the voters aren’t so sure it was a good idea. Even Brexiters are admitting that Britain’s economic problems have been exacerbated by leaving the EU. Project Fear has pretty much happened as forecast with trade disrupted and the pound falling in value. Northern Ireland has been detached from the UK.

The best thing for the Tories right now would be to go into opposition and let Labour deal with the economic crisis. Many Tories talk privately about just this.

Militant unions conventionally benefit the Conservatives but not always. It was the miners’ strike and the three-day week that did for Ted Heath in 1974.

He called the election asking who runs Britain: the unions or the Government. Voters replied that whoever it was, it wasn’t him.

Labour took over and were ultimately destroyed by the Winter of Discontent in 1979, by which time the Conservatives had a powerful leader in Margaret Thatcher. She won the next three General Elections.

That’s probably what the Conservatives need to do. Let Keir Starmer handle the unions and sort out the Northern Ireland protocol. The Labour leader is officially pro-Brexit and anti-woke but is in charge of a party that is both those things. The Corbyn left could make his life hell.

But it’s one thing to say all this, quite another to make it happen. It’s hard to lose an election well. The Tories might find themselves out of office for a very long time. There could be civil war between the remainers and Brexiters. The Scottish Tories might break away in despair.

There is no obvious way forward for the Tories right now. The Lord of Misrule has turned the party upside down. They don’t know who they are any more, and people who lose their identity lose their mind. It’s the Tory Party that needs psychological transformation.