It's a sad day when you start seeing Boris (for some reason my spell-checker keeps adapting this to “boorish”) Johnson as the best option in a leadership race. The former Conservative Chairman, Chris Patten, described the former Tory Foreign Secretary, as “incompetent as he is mendacious”. He is also about to appear in court charged with lying. But at least Johnson has a profile, of sorts.

Look at the rest of them. We have Dominic Raab, the Karate Kid, who wants to slash taxes, start an economic war with Europe and who famously described some feminists as “bigots”. Well, some probably are - but pots and kettles, Dom. It takes one to know one.

His mostly male Tory rivals have seized on Raab's advocacy of mens' rights by insisting, equally improbably, that they all “feminists”. Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove are, it seems, regulars on Reclaim the Night marches, and have convened a consciousness-raising group dedicated to dismantling the patriarchy, ie themselves.

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The most endearing of the femino-Tories is our own Rory Stewart, the White Walker, who spent two years striding across the Middle East and has been perambulating around Britain filming himself. This has won him many admirers in the press. They like his unspun, amateurish style – though the mask slipped a little when it was revealed that he had inexplicably faked at least one of his selfies. That must surely be a first for a British politician.

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Rory's admission that he once smoked opium confirmed that he is the only Tory you would want to chase the dragon with. And he did inhale, unlike most politicians who generally deny that they allowed the banned substances to enter their bloodstream. The New Statesman's political editor, Stephen Bush, pointed out that under Mr Stewart's own policies when he was prisons minister, his action could have been enough to send him to jail.

Perhaps incarceration at Her Majesty's Pleasure would make a suitable climax to his meet-the-people tour. He could even get Boris to hold the camera. However, Rambling Rory may also have difficulties getting a visa to enter America, as happened to the Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson, after she admitted to the odd toot of coke. That would be hilarious: a British prime minister barred from the US.

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Not to be outdone, other candidates have been busy thinking up youthful indiscretions – though none have equalled the audacious perfidy of Theresa May's running through wheat fields.. The Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt says took cannabis lassi – a yoghurt-based drink with benefits – when he was in India. Perhaps this encounter with dope accounts for his flip flopping over Europe. He said it would be “political suicide” to leave without a deal, soon after saying that “no deal would be better than a bad deal”. But perhaps he meant what he said - because he has killed off his own leadership campaign.

Everyone says that this has been to the benefit of the most famous back-stabber in politics, Michael “wood-burning” Gove. The Environment Secretary famously killed Boris Johnson's leadership bid in 2016 by saying Bojo was not fit to lead the country. He destroyed his own chances in the process. But the Gover is back and he's meaner than ever – at least in video clips that someone on twitter trawled from a 1990s TV show called, appropriately enough, “A Stab in the Dark”.

In much-viewed clips, Mr Gove calls Scots “beggarrrs” and “unattractive crrreatures”. (The extra “r”s are required because of the exaggerated Scottishness of his diction). This was intended to be satirical of course, but just confirms how dangerous politics has become in an age when social media never forgets. Gove is a rank outsider.

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Perhaps the most sensible potential candidate for Tory leadership isn't standing. The Chancellor Phillip Hammond, has been conducting a running reality check on the Tory candidates' daft enthusiasm for No Deal Brexit. He's also said that a second referendum may be the only way to resolve the “parliamentary deadlock”. This is of course heresy in the Conservative Party, even though everyone is talking about it.

The success of the Liberal Democrats since the European elections, now leading both the Tories and Labour in the latest YouGov poll, has forced the Peoples Vote onto the political agenda. Labour front benchers are engaged in a futile effort to get their leader to endorse a referendum. Corbyn has moved in the general direction, but he still wants a general election first, and isn't saying Labour would necessarily campaign for remain.

This referendum talk doesn't of course, extend to Scotland, where a second referendum would be a huge mistake, according to Labour, the Tory leadership candidates and the Liberal Democrat leader-in-waiting, Jo Swinson. “I won't allow it”, declared Sajid Javid which provoked an outburst of Twitter memes under #PermissionfromJavid.

Ms Swinson told BBC Scotland that because the 2014 Scottish referendum was “based on a White Paper”, it would be undemocratic to repeat the process. This is a political non-sequitur. There's surely a stronger case for a second referendum on Scotland precisely because the 2014 result has been invalidated by Brexit.

Then, Better Together insisted that voting No was the only way to “guarantee” that Scotland would remain in the European Union. The failure of the unionist parties to make any coherent argument against Indyref2 ,while backing a repeat referendum on Brexit, did not go unnoticed by Scottish voters in the week that Nicola Sturgeon unveiled her framework referendum bill.

The real trouble with the 11 Tory leadership contenders is that you can't imagine any of them actually doing a better job than Theresa May. And no, I'm not launching a “bring back May in June” campaign – she had to go for so many reasons, not least the biggest Commons defeats in history. But it doesn't mean that any of the Tory wrecking crew will be any better.

This narcissistic identity parade is distraction from the real crisis facing the UK. Not so much rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic as holding a debate on its destination even as the ship is going under. They seem to be happy that Britain is leaving without a deal in less than 5 months, despite dire warnings about the impact on the economy from the Confederation of British Industry, which is normally one of the Conservative Party's greatest supporters.

So, why do I say that Boris Johnson is the best candidate (or rather least worst) for the Tory crown? Well, the former London Mayor is actually a liberal, one-nation Tory, and not a die-hard Thatcherite like his nearest rival, Raab. But more importantly, he is notoriously unreliable, and given to telling people what they want to hear. He may appear to be the No Deal candidate du jour, but he actually voted for May's deal.

Were Johnson to take over, I suspect that there would be a presentational bust up with Brussels, after which Johnson would give into the inevitable and strike a deal on a reworded version of May's Withdrawal Agreement. Yes, it's because we can't believe a word he says that makes Boris Johnson the best option for Tory leader. His unreliability is his strength.