Though it pains me to say it, I admire Boris’s steel-clad balls

It is as a problem gambler, rather than a political observer, that I salute him for making this punt

Boris Johnson said it was after a 'huge amount of heartache' that he;d decided to go against the Prime Minister (PA)

For reasons that will become clear to those with the stamina to plough on for a few paragraphs, this is not a sentence I ever expected to write. In fact, the act of typing it will feel like a formal application for a berth in one of Her Majesty’s medium-security psychiatric facilities. Anyway, here it is. Boris Johnson, you are magnificent.

The question of what finally persuaded Boris to join the merry Brexiteers is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. All we know for certain is that: a) he was not long ago overheard denying he was ever an “Outer”; b) after last week’s top-level north London dinner summit, he took what he called the “agonising” decision to join host Michael Gove in resisting the Brussels yoke; and c) this decision will very probably obliterate his hopes of succeeding longtime frenemy David Cameron and his hero Winston Churchill as a Tory PM.

The magnificence lies in c). Boris is no dummy. He is incredibly smart and intensely analytical. Whirring away beneath the sub-Wodehousian chunterings and the ragamuffin hair is a powerful computer that has never yet made a serious miscalculation.

That may seem nonsense given the accidents punctuating an otherwise stellar CV. Apart from twice getting the sack – for flamming up quotes at The Times, and later for lying to Michael Howard – he was famously caught promising to help a friend to set up a revenge beating for a tabloid reporter. For that indiscretion, 20 years ago I nicknamed him “Boris the Jackal” in an ancient diary column. This so irritated him that he organised a charm-the-bugger-into-silence weekend at a mutual friend’s home. On Saturday evening, I found him in the kitchen on the phone to a cab firm in Southampton – “Look, I’ve been a frightful ass…” – arranging for a notebook left in the back of a taxi to be driven to West Sussex so he could write up an interview for Monday’s Daily Telegraph.

Boris was such a delight that weekend that a ceasefire ensued. It held for as long as a month before “the Jackal” resurfaced. Nothing I have written about him since has been flattering.

The last time he set eyes on me, at a pre-Olympics presentation, he flushed a bright crimson and launched into profane effings and blindings (and worse) of rage. Which explains the unlikeliness of the lavish praise above.

No personal animus, however, can mask the admiration for his political skill and judgment. Running for mayor in Labour-leaning London was a high-risk move when defeat would have strangled the legend of Boris the Unbeatable in the womb. He made the right call, and was safely delivered of the natural-born-winner image which – far more than his wit or apparent authenticity – has made him a live runner for the leadership.

Many of the Tory MPs whose votes he needs to reach the two-candidate run-off dislike, mistrust and envy him. They will not support him unless they think he guarantees their seats at a general election. So the moment defeat for the Outers strips him of the cloak of electoral invincibility is the moment you can stick a fork in him and watch those juices run clear.

He is done if Britain elects to hold on to nurse, as this change-averse country tends to. So it is as a problem gambler, rather than a political observer, that I salute him for making this punt at such massive stakes. He has bet the farm on an outcome with at best a one-in-three chance (whatever the current betting markets say). But why?

Does he have such faith in his charismatic persuasiveness that he thinks he can single-handedly flip those odds? Is he living out a Churchill fantasy in which he leads a solitary European rearguard against the hegemonic ambitions of the beastly Hun? Is it no more or less than a point – titter ye not, because people are more complex than we think – of purest principle? (All right, you can titter a bit.) Or is he an impatient desperado, with nerves frazzled by the waiting, who wants this leadership business settled either way?

If the Brexiteers win in June, Cameron will resign immediately and Boris will be Prime Minister within weeks. If not, the best he might expect from Cameron or whoever succeeds him is the kind of middle-ranking cabinet post – transport, environment, health – he would deem beneath his startling talent.

In which case, what next for someone so unsuited by nature and ego to such an indignity? Can you picture him as Michael Portillo, that treacherous Eurosceptic and Tory-leader-in-waiting from an earlier age, who went on to make such captivating television series about train timetables? Those are repeated on a cable channel called Yesterday. Portillo is literally Yesterday’s man. Is that what awaits Boris if Britain stays in? Pontificating for BBC2 viewers about public transport in ancient Athens?

But he doesn’t deserve the comparison. What destroyed Portillo, who chickened out of challenging John Major when the leadership was his for the taking, was cowardice. If Boris destroys himself, it will be through raw courage. He could have officially backed the In campaign, winking at the camera to signal his true feelings. He could have waited until the battle for the succession against George Osborne and Theresa May. With hindsight, this may look like the wiser course.

Instead, he has done more than electrify a moribund debate about Britain’s future, and reminded us why politics is the finest combat sport available to humanity. With this dramatic “kill or be killed” roll of the dice, he has taken the biggest gamble in political memory.

If he glamorises that to himself as truly Churchillian – if he hears his hero’s ghost whispering “This is your moment to reshape our island story” – you can forgive him that grandiosity.

You can forgive him almost anything, in fact, when he has such colossal balls to go with a gambler’s heart. Winston, who also had both, would be proud of him today.