The prime minister wants an election because he wants to stay in post. He is not doing it to deliver what’s best for the UK

Every government since 2016 has been driven mad by Brexit’s central contradiction – that there is an economic price to pay for the UK to take back control of its borders. Boris Johnson leads the most demented to date. He uses “the will of the people” to justify the replacement of parliamentary scrutiny with coercion and deceit. Mr Johnson won power because two-thirds of the Tory members preferred the worst foreign secretary in living memory to his successor. Many feared, to quote Mr Johnson’s hero Winston Churchill, that his was the worst appointment since “Caligula made his horse a consul”.

Mr Johnson has proved better organised and more ruthless than his opponents. If he can, he aims to offer MPs a Hobson’s choice next month of implementing Brexit either via a “negotiated” deal or with no deal at all. Then Britain will leave the EU on 31 October, “do or die”. If his MPs try to force Mr Johnson to ask the EU for a three-month delay to the Brexit leaving date, he apparently will deselect them. Labour should support the Tory rebels, not least because parliament has voted against a damaging no-deal Brexit.

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