In this column some weeks ago I wondered whether the Prime Minister’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings – Baldrick to Johnson’s Black Adder– had a ‘cunning plan’ to rescue the PM from what looked like the fine mess he had landed him in.

Never in living memory has an incoming prime minister had such a disastrous start to his term in office, including a string of defeats in the Commons, a unanimous Supreme Court ruling against him and indications from the Palace that he had deeply offended the Queen.

To make matters worse, Mr Johnson capped off this dreadful start by an angry and inappropriate performance in the Commons as MPs questioned him after the Supreme Court ruling. At this stage the PM, and his chances of securing a deal with the EU, appeared to be at their lowest nadir. Could things get any worse?

They could, but they didn’t.

This week Mr Johnson was in Manchester at the annual Tory Party conference. Unlike their Labour counterpart, the annual gatherings of the Conservatives are not really conferences at all but more akin to pilgrimages for the faithful to pay homage to their leader – whoever he or she might be (even Mrs May could be guaranteed a rapturous response).

But when the Prime Minister addressed the conference he didn’t give his usual rumbustious, knockabout, take-no-prisoners performance, instead he was almost emollient as he spelt out his new EU proposals that appeared as if he was really trying to woo the 27.

The most significant was the acceptance that, to all and intents and purposes, Northern Ireland would remain in the EU’s single market, in other words accepting EU standards for goods and services, whilst the rest of the UK would leave meaning here would be a notional border down the Irish Sea.

There was also a commitment that there would be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic once we leave the EU, something that Dublin has regarded as absolutely crucial.

But there were stings in the tail of both of these supposed concessions.

The single market proposal for Northern Ireland could be vetoed by the DUP if and when Stormont ever gets to meet again. And whilst the Johnson proposals did not involve a traditional hard border, because we would be outside the EU customs union there would be a need for customs checks; hence there would be a plethora of mini-borders across the Province as customs officers undertook their checks. And those customs officers would require protection involving police and soldiers - tempting new targets for Republican para-militaries still intent on uniting Ireland by force. In other words not one border but many!

But here’s where Cummings’ cunning plan kicks in.

For the proposals were never meant to be acceptable to the EU. Whilst looking like they contained major concessions designed to get a deal, they in fact had two totally different objectives.

First, they were designed to woo the votes of three groups of MPs: the Tory hard Brexiteers in the European Research Group and their allies in Northern Ireland’s DUP, second, those Tory MPs on the other wing of the Party who had been expelled for voting to try and block no deal and finally those few Labour MPs from Leave constituencies who are desperate to have some sort of deal to vote for. If all three groups came on board Johnson could demonstrate to the EU, and the country, that there was, at last, a parliamentary majority for a deal, in other words Parliament wasn’t blocking a deal.

But second, the proposals were designed to force the EU to reject them and thus appear to shoulder the blame for the breakdown in talks and the ejection of the UK from the EU without any deal - a line that Johnson and his advisers believe will play well, not just with his own supporters, but also with potential Brexit Party and Labour Leave voters in the coming General Election.

So if and when we tumble out of the EU, and Parliament finally agrees to a general election, Boris Johnson will be well-placed to win, particularly given what might appear to voters to be Labour’s lack of clarity as to whether they are a Leave or Remain party and continuing doubts among the electorate about Jeremy Corbyn.

A cunning, or should that be, Cumming plan indeed!

Correction: An eagle-eyed reader has rightly pulled me up for writing last week that in 1975 we voted to remain in the EU. We didn’t, we voted to remain in the EEC – the European Economic Community – for some, an important difference.

Ivor Gaber is professor of political journalism at the University of Sussex and a former political correspondent based at Westminster