Bye Bye Boris. Stephen Crabb for Prime Minister

My name is Borismandias, clown of clowns. Look on my works, ye, mighty, and laugh.

If you had submitted the events of the past few days as a script for a drama-documentary – or even a comedy – there would have been no takers. The readers would have laughed at you, not with you. But it is all true. The incredible is now commonplace.

Last weekend, to the horror of those of us who regard him with horror, Boris was piling on momentum. When he took over the Spectator, Andrew Gimson said that this was like leaving an ape in charge of a Ming vase. But at the Spec, he had Stuart Reid and Mary Wakefield to do much of the work, leaving the Editor free to liaise with another senior member of staff, Petronella Wyatt. The vase survived. The Premiership offers a different dimension of porcelain-smashing potential.

Yet otherwise sensible people were ready to take the risk. “He’s really a one-nation Tory” they would say. “He’s never been against immigration. He’ll be controllable”. There was something in all that. Boris has no principles, beliefs, morals or values: no integrity, political or personal. He is merely a confection of selfishness and ambitions.

So Premier Boris would have been a tabula rasa, happy to disregard any previous statements or promises. Dear reader, if that is the sort of Prime Minister you would have preffered, that is the sort of Prime Minister you would have got. I am profoundly glad that you did not get your way: that you and the country have been spared the need for bitter regret.

Last weekend, Michael Gove merely had to announce his candidacy and he would have been favourite. The golden bowl was on his lap. No ape he, but he dropped it. Then Lady Macbeth appeared, with daggers (she is also known as Mrs Gove, and writes under the name Sarah Vine). She did not drop the daggers. She ensured that they were inserted straight between Boris’s shoulder-blades. That earned her husband less gratitude than might have been expected. Many of the Remainers who were happy to kill off Boris also concluded that Michael was incorrigbly treacherous. During the campaign, he had done nothing to discourage the claim that there could be another £350 million a week for the NHS. He did insist that it was time to disregard experts. Michael is an intellectual or he is nothing. He is not the man to ape General Milan Astray: “Down with intelligence.”

Many of the Boris team are now sulphurous in their denunciation of Mr Gove. Andrea Leadsom and Liam Fox are picking up Boris voters. On Wednesday afternoon, I understand five Tory MPs told Michael to f*** off out of the House of Commons tea-room. Borisers are alleging that Mr Gove sub-edited Monday’s Daily Telegraph column, which appeared under Boris’s name, and which alarmed many Brexiters by its willingness to compromise and retreat. While it was being drafted, Boris was playing cricket. One might have thought that for the first time in his life, he would have concluded that he ought to give some proper thought to an article.

One way and another, camp Gove is in trouble. Theresa May has moved into a strong lead. But could she be PM? In government, she has always been an extremely difficult colleague. Few junior ministers enjoyed working for her: few Cabinet colleagues found her remotely collegiate.

Even David Cameron had problems in dealing with her. Chronically cold and charmless, she always seemed suspicious of able or imaginative civil servants, which ensured that the Home Office has been an unhappy and demoralised department. She prefers to shut herself in with a couple of special advisors. Her office’s favoured method of communicating with the rest of the building was terse requests for fact-checking or rude e-mails. Could someone like that grow into an effective PM, or would it be Gordon Brown Mk II?

That brings us to Stephen Crabb and his running-mate, Sajid Javid. Although everyone seems to like Mr Crabb, a lot of MPs are worried about his lack of experience. But Crabb/Javid are more experienced – and older – that Cameron/Osborne were in 2005. They undoubtedly have star quality, and without banging on excessively about back stories, their backgrounds have endowed them with toughness and steel.

This bizarre campaign will have further twists before a new leader is chosen. But recent hours have provided two reasons for at least a ration of cautious optimism: the implosion of Boris Johnson and the emergence of Stephen Crabb.