Johnson is OK with that, because his bid to come back as party leader can only work if Truss is fired for losing the election. Even then, it’s not guaranteed, but he can hope that the current party rules, which give the final choice to 160,000 Conservative Party activists, almost all old, white, non-urban and upper-middle class, will serve him well.

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Meanwhile, all he has to do is hang onto his seat in parliament, so he’s available when his despairing party turns to him again after being ejected from office by a landslide vote (he hopes) in 2024 – or perhaps sooner. He has scarcely bothered to turn up for work since he was forced to resign three months ago yet had to stay on as a caretaker prime minister.

Can his cunning plan work? It’s not inconceivable. After all, other gonzo populists – such as Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi; his spiritual brothers – have managed comebacks or seem well positioned to do so now. (Berlusconi, dominant in Italian politics from 1994 to 2011, is currently working on his third comeback at the age of 85.) The three men have much in common. All led populist coalitions that tried to combine the very rich with the angry lower-middle class and the “downwardly mobile”, which required them to make contradictory promises to the two groups – and they all papered over that gap with endless “culture wars” against minorities, immigrants, the “liberal elite”.

It’s government by chaos, but in the right hands (Berlusconi and maybe Trump) it has staying power nevertheless. In Boris Johnson’s hands, maybe not.

Consider the contrast between Trump, who still controls the Republican Party utterly despite a failed coup attempt, and Johnson, most of whose Conservative fellow members of parliament are simply embarrassed by his comeback ambitions.

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“I’d walk over hot coals to stop that,” a former senior minister told The Independent. “I think a lot of us would try to kamikaze that. The guy needs to recognise he’s had his go.”

Gwynne Dyer is a historian and journalist. His latest book is The Shortest History of War.

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