People, even including your opponents, are getting used to the idea that you are not only the Prime Minister, but likely to remain so for some time to come. Yet before we settle down under the new regime, we should remember just how incredible this would have seemed, well within recent political memory.
If you had approached a publisher ten years ago with what would have turned out to be an accurate prediction of the Boris-ade, you would have been laughed to scorn.
Even a few months ago, you appeared to be a most implausible candidate for Downing Street. If you did somehow win, would you have any idea what to do? There was hardly any support for you among the battle-hardened veterans of the Tory commentariat. Counting myself in that group, I was exceedingly sceptical about your judgment, bewildered by your successes and full of alarm about the future.
These days, when my former opinions are quoted back at me, I insist that it must have been someone else of the same name writing about someone else of the same name. Less flippantly, I make a simple point. I was wrong.
When I say wrong, I mean 180 degrees wrong. I have only one excuse for such a catastrophic error. You are an extraordinarily complex and protean character whom it is easy to misread. Anyway, since the election, you have confounded the doubters by the way in which you have taken back control, as it were.
As the election-winning PM you have not put a foot wrong and are in an immensely strong position.
You are stronger than Churchill in May 1940; it was not certain that he could win the war or control the Tory party.
Stronger than Mrs Thatcher in May 1979; it was by no means certain that she could win the peace or control the Tory party.
