With five PMs in seven years, the Tories are all at sea with no ideas

Late one night in 1867, Benjamin Disraeli, chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Derby's Tory government, cunningly thwarted a Liberal wrecking amendment in the Commons to his second reform bill. Having written to Queen Victoria at 2am, he went to the Carlton Club in London, where he was cheered and toasted as "the man who rode the race, who took the time, who kept the time, and who did the trick". The following year, he became prime minister.

- Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Much the same words might have been used in the small hours of 13 December 2019, when Boris Johnson pranced about Conservative central office in London, pumping his fists in the air as his adoring staff and colleagues embraced him. In the less than five months he had been Tory leader and prime minister, Johnson had purged his parliamentary party of some of its best and most honourable people, had precipitated a general election by dubious and possibly unlawful means, had then fought the election on a promise to "Get Brexit done" - and had won the Tories' largest parliamentary majority for more than 30 years. Here was another leader who had ridden the race and done the trick.

And there the comparison ends. After defeat by William Gladstone and the Liberals at the 1868 election, the Tories returned with a crushing victory in 1874. Disraeli spent six more years at No 10, ending his days as the Earl of Beaconsfield and Knight of the Garter, adored by Victoria, ruefully admired by Bismarck.

Within three months of his own election triumph, Johnson was faced with the pandemic crisis - which he was totally unequipped to deal with - and, by the summer of 2022, he had been ejected by his own party, to be replaced by Liz Truss, who had an even more absurd and shorter-lived tenure. Today, Johnson's career has ended in failure, for himself- and maybe for the Tories.