Chris

If Boris delivers any sort of Brexit next month, Labour will have nowhere to turn. It will have to agree to an election, which Boris would fight without any of the Gaukeward squad standing in any constituencies and, one assumes, any new candidates forced to attest in their own blood that they’re fully behind the leader’s Brexit strategy (the substantive negotiations still being ahead of us). If Brexit is anything other than the No Deal kind, Farage won’t go away, but I think it will be fairly easy for Boris to neutralise him by simply pointing out that Brexit has happened and there’s no point to Nigel any more. Without their platform and funding via their MEP seats it will be increasingly difficult for them to continue and to get any significant hearing anyway.

There are still too many variables to make a comfortable prediction, but it is possible at least to see a scenario in which Boris delivers Brexit next month and acquires a governable, compliant Commons majority shortly thereafter.