Boris is leading a parade of the puny through a Tory fantasy land

Johnson is the star turn in this ninth-rate sitcom, says Matthew Norman

The last obstacle between him and No 10 is the Conservative vote for the final two candidates (Reuters)

If this Tory leadership election was a fifth-rate spy novel, the double agent would have blown his cover by page three.

Boris Johnson’s pledge to raise the threshold for top rate income tax to £80,000 would reveal him to the dimmest reader as the mole – a socialist sleeper planted in the Conservative movement long ago, with the mission to propel Labour into power when the time was right.

But it isn’t a fifth-rate espionage novel. It’s a ninth-rate sitcom, twice as broad and archaic as When The Whistle Blows, Ricky Gervais’s pastiche in Extras, and thrice as witless.