A RUM assortment of groups and interests will have cause to be pleased if Boris Johnson becomes the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. None of this stems from any great desire to see Britain led by a government which is strong and stable. Rather, their delight is that of the village idiot who wakes one day to be told that there’s a bigger bam in the neighbourhood, setting off fires and scaring the horses.

Donald Trump and the carnival of the absurd which follows in his wake will be salivating at the prospect of Prime Minister Johnson. Mr Trump’s advisers must begin their day with the same sense of dread felt by rogue buccaneers who were about to walk the plank on Captain Kidd’s pirate galleon. I like to imagine them all drawing lots for the delicate task of telling their boss that it wasn’t the Prince of Whales that he met or that the Pharaohs stopped ruling Egypt some time ago.

With Mr Johnson as Prime Minister they may be able to breathe a little easier. When the president next insults the citizenry or head of state of a foreign country it will seem a little less startling than the news that Prime Minister Johnson has just praised the swordsmanship of Saudi executioners on a visit to the gangster state to sell them more rockets or that membership of swingers' clubs could be provided free on the NHS for people suffering from anxiety. Yesterday came the news that he, too, had joined the great Tory initiative to stimulate growth in the global narcotics industry. He claimed his solitary adventure in snorting cocaine was “a single inconclusive event” which occurred when he was a teenager. This left us wondering what a “conclusive” event might have looked like.

Meanwhile the sense of relief being experienced by George RR Martin, creator of Game of Thrones is palpable. Mr Martin must be glad that his stygian fantasy was completed before the prospect of Prime Minister Johnson and President Trump had become a reality. The oppressive sense of impending chaos was a significant and unique selling point of this series. In an age of Trump and Johnson such a world might not have seemed so fantastic.

Joining Mr Trump among those who expect to have their reputations enhanced if Mr Johnson enters Number 10 are various other of the world’s chisellers who have lied and cheated their way into leadership. We have been accustomed to denigrating the countries they lead as ‘banana republics’ and ‘rogue states’ while smirking at their weakness for white military uniforms, peaked hats and Ray-Bans (in Britain we only allow male members of the royal family to dress up like toy soldiers). But when the UK’s chief executive is prone to endangering the lives of British subjects languishing in foreign jails; comparing the EU to Hitler and Napoleon in seeking to unify Europe and dismissing the good people of Papua New Guinea as cannibals and chief-killers the tin-pot community can rest easy for a bit.

Mr Johnson’s rivals in the contest to become our next Prime Minister will not be too put out either if he wins. In any other period of modern British history lacking the presence of Mr Johnson most of the other leadership contenders would be regarded as right-wing extremists of the Tory scarecrow wing.

Mark Smith: Nicola Sturgeon, could you please stop talking about “Scottish values”. There is no such thing

Thus we find Jeremy Hunt still struggling with the idea that people in the UK might genuinely need food-banks. Here too we have Michael Gove diverting £400m to plug a large hole in his chaotic free schools project to the detriment of essential funding for local authority places and being scornful of Northern Ireland’s ground-breaking Good Friday agreement. And there’s Sajid Javid stripping the young Isis bride Shamima Begum of her citizenship to appease the Tories’ UKIP wing. With Boris Johnson at their helm this collection of hard right grotesques seem almost moderate.

The only senior Tory figure who has cause to fret at the prospect of Prime Minister Johnson is Ruth Davidson. The leader of the Scottish Tories has long been impervious to the dubious charms of Mr Johnson and is reported to have had him banned from gracing this year’s Spring conference in Aberdeen. Ms Davidson has cut a confused and uncertain figure this year, changing her position backwards and forwards on Brexit and managing to confuse herself this week on what the SNP require to be allowed to open negotiations for a second referendum on independence.

She also seems powerless to rein in the excesses of the Scottish Tory contingent at Westminster who have come to be universally regarded as a collection of infants let loose on a museum with no parental guidance. This week they all voted to suspend Parliament in the event of it voting down a no-deal Brexit scenario. Not for them the nuanced calculations in seeking to protect their own seats: their minimal contribution to the life of the current parliament means that most of them are destined to lose their seats at the next election. We know it and so do they.

With Boris Johnson as her boss Ms Davidson’s recent travails will increase. For the last two years she has enjoyed a good press from fawning political reporters who forgot their default position ought to be one where they keep a safe distance from politicians and retain a sense of healthy cynicism. At times it seems that the Scottish Tory leader is being interviewed by puppies.

It’s not that Mr Johnson is flaky on the question of independence, of course he’s not. The problem for Ms Davidson is that he gives the impression not that he is disdainful of Scotland but that he doesn’t give a fig for anything that happens up here at all. His comment that a pound spent in London is worth more than a pound spent in Scotland seems characteristic of his attitude to Scotland. He would like to belong to the same class as Jacob Rees-Mogg and like him longs for an uncomplicated, 18th century version of old England unencumbered by whingeing and grievance-obsessed Scots. When the next independence campaign starts Ms Davidson may find that her biggest problem will be devising a strategy to keep Boris Johnson’s presence in Scotland to a bare minimum.

On the Tory menu: knives, brickbats and mud-slinging