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s the new year opens, the absent virtue that Boris Johnson most needs is resolution. Though 2020 was not a year that anyone foresaw with the promised clear vision, 2021 will be when 2020s consequences come in. Mr Johnson has delayed and prevaricated his way through the coronavirus pandemic so far but has been given the benefit of the doubt. When the economic consequences become plain, as they will this year, the Prime Ministers resolution will be tested and he will bemoan the loss of the one great advantage he has carried with him until now.

That advantage is Brexit and the signing and ratifying of a thin trade deal is a reminder that getting what you want in politics is rarely an unmixed blessing. The Tory party replaced Theresa May with Johnson so that he could get Brexit done and he fought and won a general election on the same slogan and the same basis. Now, he has done something risky, which is that he has, actually, got Brexit done. There will be further squalls and disputes but, in political terms Brexit is a done deal.

That success gives the Conservative Party two problems. The first, the lesser of the two, is that Brexit turns out to bring nothing to those who voted for it. We are almost a week into our new age of national freedom. What fresh liberties have you enjoyed so far? What have you done that the European Union was previously preventing you from doing? No, me neither. The whole argument has been a colossal waste of time and most people will carry on their lives without ever noticing anything, for good or ill. Which raises the second, really troubling, problem for the Conservative Party. How will it cope without Brexit to complain about? There is a psychological dimension to this. The EU has provided a convenient scapegoat for Tories of a certain vintage, and now they have rid themselves of that ready-made excuse. But the worst of getting what you wished for is that you can no longer go on wishing for it. You no longer have an issue that stirs your passions and unites your coalition.

The Conservatives two blocs of support have little in common: wealthy shire elites and poorer northern voters

The Conservative Party won an unusual victory in December 2019. It now has two blocs of support with little in common. In rural England a wealthy, educated shire elite still saw the Tories as the custodians of their best interests. In the towns of the West Midlands, the North-West and North-East of England a much poorer constituency who regarded Jeremy Corbyn as unpatriotic deserted the Labour Party. Economically and socially these two groups share very little. They have diametrically opposed views on the correct level of taxation and the desirability of using state power to pursue a more equal country. The only thing that brought them together was Brexit and now Brexit has gone.

Johnson thus goes into this new year resolving to seek other ways to bind his coalition together. His immediate task, of course, is to get a grip on his uncertain handling of the pandemic. The obvious course, loathe as the Prime Minister appears to be to make a decision, is to establish a national lockdown with a plan attached for unlocking as the vaccine is distributed. But even a more assured pandemic response will not stifle the job losses that are coming. When the bad economic news comes in the Government is going to need a plan to point to and it is going to have to be a plan that unites the shire counties with its urban vote.

This is not easy. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that Britain has the starkest regional inequalities in the developed world. Only London, the South-East and the East of England generate an economic surplus. Johnson keeps saying that he is committed to rebalancing the economy, but this is going to take millions he does not have in the Treasury and political capital he will not find in his party. There may be other issues on which Tories of the North and South can unite. Immigration and crime, perhaps. But none will be as resonant as Brexit.

Johnson is a successful electoral politician and his good fortune has been to have competed against only duffers. Labour fielded a superannuated Ken Livingstone in the mayoral elections of 2008 and 2012 and the hapless Jeremy Corbyn in the December 2019 general election. Finally, Johnson, if he sticks around for the next contest, will have to face his first serious opponent in Sir Keir Starmer. When that time comes he will have to find something to talk about because, for the moment, he has lost his winning hand.

Philip Collins is founder and writer-in-chief of The Draft

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How will the Tory party cope without Brexit to complain about? - Evening Standard