Conservative party

Priti Patel is the new Home Secretary. This is likely to attract a fair bit of opprobrium from Boris Johnson's critics, given she is a supporter of the death penalty. Whether or not she has been given any remit to examine that particular policy issue, she has a big job on her hands. The Home Office is one of the hardest departments to run. Theresa May managed to survive it, largely by micromanaging everyone else into the dust. Her successor Amber Rudd did not, finding that obeying her boss too well led to her being implicated in the Windrush scandal. Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, May's aides in the Home Office and then in Number 10, would constantly tell friends that they were always trying to avert disaster in the department or one of its agencies.

Boris Johnson will now be receiving plenty of unsolicited advice about how to be Prime Minister. As his victory speech a few minutes ago showed, though, he's not planning to ditch one of the qualities that got him into this job in the first place. Brand Boris isn't about the typical prime ministerial behaviour, stood squarely behind a lectern and trying to offer gravitas. To try to squeeze Johnson into this mould would be about as successful as Gordon Brown's attempts to look cheerful. That's why his speech was based around the acronym 'DUDE' - Deliver Brexit, Unite our Country, Defeat Jeremy Corbyn and Energise.

Tonight's Sun debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt was far more relaxed than last week's head-to-head clash. But it was also stuffed with news lines, as both men prepared for the final few days of voting in the Tory leadership contest. Both declared the Northern Irish backstop dead, Johnson ruled out an election before Brexit happens, and they both attacked Donald Trump for telling black and minority ethnic congresswomen to 'go back'. On Brexit, the answer that Johnson gave about the backstop showed how likely it is that he might pursue a no-deal Brexit: he rejected a time limit or unilateral exit clause.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias is often taught to schoolchildren, who read it as a warning about the fragility of human power. Conservatives should study it now and ensure they take an opportunity to learn from Theresa May’s mistakes on immigration. If there was one issue that helped May become, for a short time, a figure of “cold command” over her party, it was immigration. As home secretary and then Prime Minister, she was the senior figure at the top of the Conservative party who consistently took the hardest line on the issue.

Sir Max Hastings, whom I engaged as editor of the Daily Telegraph in 1986 and who stayed in that role for about nine years, seems to have installed himself at the head of the rabid mob of journalistic haters of Boris Johnson. In recent pieces in The Spectator and the Guardian he has described Boris as ‘a tasteless joke’ interested only in ‘fame and gratification… a scoundrel or a mere rogue’ (a subtle distinction), and in any case a man afflicted by ‘moral bankruptcy’. Max concedes that Boris is likely to be the next prime minister and preemptively accuses him of conducting a ‘celebrity government as in Ukraine and the US’.

When Boris Johnson was appointed editor of this magazine two decades ago, an unkind soul said it was like ‘entrusting a Ming vase in the hands of an ape’. The remark encapsulated many people’s worst fears about the man who will almost certainly be Britain’s prime minister in four weeks’ time, if not before: that Boris is an irresponsible joker. Similar warnings were made when he was elected London mayor. His refusal to conform to type encourages a constant expectation of imminent disaster. What if Boris flops in No. 10? Even his supporters can’t be sure he won’t fail: his election as leader is a gamble from a party that believes its very survival is at stake.

The first time I felt like an outsider was when I was six years old. My cousin told me we needed to change our walking route to her school because of the ‘bad kids’ who supported the National Front. That was the first time. But not the last. When I was at secondary school, the other kids told me all about their summer holidays. I’d only ever go to Rochdale but pretended I’d been abroad like them, because they couldn’t tell if I had a tan. When I wanted to do the O-levels and A-levels I needed although I had a couple of inspiring teachers who I’ll be forever grateful to I was told that kids like me should know their limits and stay in their lane.