What the hell is a Progressive Conservative?

Who is your favourite brave Remainer Conservative MP? Anna Soubry has to be near the top of the list, for having remarked before the referendum: ‘We are trusting the British people. We will go to the people, and let the people decide whether or not to stay within the EU.’ And then at about lunchtime on 24 June 2016 bravely insisting that we should take not the slightest bit of notice of what the British people had decided.

Or what about that brave no no-deal triumvirate of the early Victorian funeral directors ‘Hammond, Grieve and Gauke, for Exceptional Service in the Sad Event of Your Passing’, sunlight palely glinting on a cheap coffin lid? There’s them, then — and it’s hard to think of a politician who has more bravely tried to stop any real Brexit occurring than the Chancellor, although his fellow pall-bearer Dominic Grieve gave it a good shot.

My own favourite at the moment, though, is, of course, Nick Boles, who pirouetted out of the Conservative party on Monday with a flounce that would have done justice to a BBC weatherman. ‘Oh no, Nick, don’t go, come back…’ a dim-witted colleague cried, apparently in earnest — but Nick had gone, and let us all know of his wrath, his pique. ‘Mummy — MUMMY — they WON’T DO AS I TELL THEM.’ Boles is now sitting as a Progressive Conservative. What the hell is that when it’s at home? It makes about the same amount of sense as a Democratic Maoist or maybe a Flammable Fire Blanket.