“TREACHERY with a smile on its face.” Margaret Thatcher’s famous line after she was toppled by her once true colleagues is being echoed by those ultra-loyalists bemoaning the downfall of their hero Boris Johnson.

The Conservative cavalry charge to be the party’s next leader should be all about vision, unity and a re-establishment of integrity but, instead, the vengeful Johnson Ultras could poison the contest and do untold damage to the Tories’ chances of winning the next General Election. Voters invariably punish division.

The ever-diplomatic Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, couldn’t help herself, complaining after the Downing St defenestration, that the “hounds of hell” had been unleashed.

“People,” she warned, “will shred each other to pieces in the media. It’s going to be a bloodbath.”

And so, it seems, the bloodbath has begun.

The first barbs have been targeted at Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor, who announced his candidacy on Friday via a slick video. It has to be noted how the North Yorkshire MP registered his campaign website - www.ready4rishi.com - a day before the PM resigned. Funny that.

It was, of course, the seemingly co-ordinated act of Sunak and his friend and Cabinet colleague, Sajid Javid, resigning within minutes of each other that triggered the avalanche of ministerial departures, leading ultimately to Johnson’s resignation.

There was said to be “huge anger” among the Johnson loyalists at Sunak’s move with a Number 10 insider branding him a “treacherous bastard”.

One Johnsonite Cabinet minister told the FT: “Rishi will get everything he deserves for leading the charge in bringing down the Prime Minister.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the High Priest of Boris-ness, denounced Sunak, describing him at Thursday’s new-look Ikea Cabinet as the “much-lamented Socialist Chancellor”.

The fact Sunak is making clear that, unlike many of his rivals, he won’t be pushing for quick tax cuts and telling colleagues what is needed is “honesty” not “fairy tales,” will only anger the likes of Dorries and Rees-Mogg.

As the alcohol flowed at this week’s summer Spectator party, true feelings reportedly came to the fore.

Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, was described discourteously as “mad” and “Boris in a dress” by one colleague while Nadhim Zahawi, made Chancellor one day only to tell the PM to go the next, was branded an “idiot” with his detractor adding: “I mean how can you show such terrible judgement. I’m afraid he’s totally blown it.”

It’s expected this weekend the likes of Truss, Zahawi, Javid and Jeremy Hunt will enter the fray as Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, declined to.

Tomorrow, it will be up to the Conservative backbench 1922 committee to draw up the timetable with an expectation it will seek to get the stage-one MP process over by the start of recess on July 21 with the stage-two party membership process finishing late August/early September.

Yesterday, “no-hopers” like Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, and Kemi Badenoch, the former Equalities Minister, were urged by colleagues to pull out to quicken the contest process.

Tom Tugendhat, ex-soldier and Chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, made his intention to stand some time ago, should Johnson fall.

A new skin, as it were, has the attraction of not having any baggage, of being untarnished by the taint of the discredited Johnson administration. The more quizzical have pointed out the Kent MP has had no ministerial experience. But neither did Tony Blair and he became Prime Minister and won three elections.

As he claimed the Conservatives were the only party voters could “trust to unequivocally stand up for the Union and Scotland’s role within it,” Tugendhat said trust and integrity must be restored in British politics, noting: “A clean slate is an opportunity to restore this integrity to our politics.”

Whoever fits the Conservative crown will face a number of formidable challenges from the continuing Covid pandemic and the effect it is having on the NHS, calibrating public sector pay amid the strikes, Nicola Sturgeon’s relentless push for another Scottish independence vote, the war in Ukraine, and cross-Channel illegal immigration to improving post-Brexit relations with the EU, not least over the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol.

But at the top of the agenda will be getting the country through the immediate cost-of-living crisis.

All of the candidates will be promising tax cuts in one form or another at some time or another. Yet cutting taxes could have serious implications for controlling inflation, the level of public expenditure, the fiscal deficit and the ballooning national debt.

It will also be interesting to see what domestic legislative priorities the new PM will have. Will the current bills like those relating to the Protocol, citizens’ rights, levelling-up and online safety, survive in their current forms or be changed?

In his long goodbye, Johnson has kept true to form by filling ministerial vacancies with his loyal friends. None more ridiculous than the elevation of Peter Bone, whose supportive intervention amid a mutinous Commons atmosphere this week stood out so much that even Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle remarked he was a “lone batter” for the Government.

The 69-year-old Northamptonshire MP has been made Deputy Commons Leader, so essential to the running of Government that it hasn’t been filled since 2018.

It could be that on the other side of the 2024 General Election, we will look back on this week of Tory turbulence as a pivotal moment to how Britain’s political fortunes were crafted.

Either that the PM’s forced departure set Labour fair on the road to victory as the agent of real change following a period of Conservative dysfunction and duplicity or that, with Johnson gone, the Tories were able to reset and reinvent themselves under a new leader with a new approach and a new focus.

One thing’s for sure, none of us, for better or for worse, will forget the soap opera of the Johnson premiership. But if the Tories lose badly in 2024, there will be no prizes for guessing who will get most of the blame and he will deserve to.