Boris Is No Barbara

In decrying the EU's racist immigration policies, it is good to see the Conservatives catching up with Barbara Castle.

But there is a party that will have a three-line whip against Chequers. It is not the Conservative Party, the opponents of Chequers within which resemble the Maastricht Rebels both in their fewness (now as then, it is always the same handful of people) and in their personal eccentricity.

Bringing us, alas, to Boris Johnson, who wrote two articles for the referendum, one on each side, and who appeared on television ashen-faced as the result came through from Sunderland.

Knowing nothing about the areas the votes of which were always going to be decisive, he had still assumed that Remain was going to win, that David Cameron would therefore carry on for a couple of years, and that, having cast himself as the darling of the supposedly pro-Leave grassroots, he would then take over from him.

It did not work out that way, and in any case nothing about the Conservative grassroots suggests that they are even as pro-Leave as the population at large, or the core Labour vote in particular. Leadership Elections and parliamentary candidate selections give no such impression, to say the least.

And the Conservative three-line whip will be for Chequers, with only a small number of professional eccentrics voting against it. Well, a small number of professional eccentrics, and the entire Parliamentary Labour Party.