THE first time I ever spoke to Boris Johnson was in the corridor outside the chamber of the House of Commons. He was still mayor of London and rarely seen in the Palace of Westminster, far less heard speaking in debates. But suddenly there he was hurtling along, ragged blond hair carefully askew. It was too good an opportunity to miss so I waylaid him and remarked how good I thought London transport was, at least for MPs trying to get home late at night. As mayor Boris had a theoretical responsibility for the big red busses as well as the tube.

Boris seemed slightly taken aback at the lese-majeste of some pushy Nat (or indeed any lesser mortal) accosting him but he stopped to chat nevertheless. Perhaps he was just trying to work out if I was taking the mickey. The truth is that Mayor Boris hyped a lot of vanity projects which never materialised. Remember the illusive Thames Estuary Airport? When they did appear, the results were not what he initially claimed. His Thames cable-car link proved to be the most expensive to build urban cable system on the planet, fortunately saved by EU cash. His trademark red Routemaster busses sprouted all sorts of technical problems with their hybrid engines and non-opening windows. But then, Boris seems to have a thing about non-performing bus promises.

My conversation with Boris quickly switched to matters Scottish. Experienced in the flesh, his technique with people is interesting. He was deeply uncomfortable with me asking him questions, so he hid behind peppering me a battery of his own. It instantly turned out he seemed to know next to nothing about Scotland, Scottish politics or Scottish aspirations. Superficially, one could be flattered by his inquisitiveness. Afterwards, one was struck by his sheer ignorance for a supposedly first-rank politician – this being less than a year after the independence referendum. “But what do you Scots want?” he kept saying, clearly at a loss to understand why 56 SNPers had suddenly turned up in the Commons.

The events surrounding Burkagate have reminded me of just how superficial yet calculating is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. But I don’t write him off. If anything, the stooshie regarding his cheap jibes regarding Muslim women has served as the political dog whistle that now almost guarantees his succession as next leader of the ailing British Conservative Party.

True, Boris Johnson is intellectually lazy but that matters not a whit. I discovered this myself when questioning him on his appearance before the Commons Treasury Select Committee, after he became Foreign Secretary. When I pressed him to justify the numbers he kept quoting regarding UK contributions to the EU, he hummed and hawed, prevaricated and changed the subject. This was more than ignorance on his part. He simply did not care what the truth was. For Johnson, facts come far behind weaving his own political narrative to justify his own course of action. Faulting his logic or facts gets you nowhere because his political method is classic populism: he is “the leader” who will lead “the people” against the “corrupt, alien elite”. Rejecting his logic is therefore to side with the alien clique against the people.

From this classic populist perspective, ideological simplicity is a virtue – which means offering scapegoats while fudging issues, the better to mobilise the maximum number of supporters across the class divide. OK, so Boris wrote a column supposedly decrying the wicked Europeans for infringing the right of all citizens to wear what dress they prefer, even the burka. Strike #1 against the European elites. But simultaneously he insults the Muslim women who wear the burka. Strike #2 against immigrants. Of course, the latter can be dismissed as a Boris “joke”. Result: anyone can read into the narrative what they want except for the dominant theme: “Boris will speak for us! Boris is our leader! We are his people!”

Normally, at this point, I would suggest that Boris Johnson’s desperately pathetic ambition to be Tory leader and British prime minister far outruns his personal capacities. Look at his prevarications before opting to join the Leave campaign. Look how he botched the Tory succession after David Cameron’s resignation. Look how he sent his time as foreign secretary ... well, I’m not sure what he did as foreign secretary except get Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe a longer jail sentence in Iran. As far as populist demagogues go, our Boris is a bit of a twit. Until now, that is.

First there is the context inside the Tory party. Theresa May has bumbled the Brexit negotiations, angering the Tory right and much of the electorate (wherever they stand on Europe). Her political days are numbered. However, there are no serious candidates on the Conservative Remain side who could do a better job or command widespread support in the country. Amongst the Brexiteers, Burkagate has allowed Boris to definitively upstage his rivals, including Jacob Rees-Mogg. As a recent column in the right-wing Spectator magazine put it: “It has to be Boris.”

Second there is the political balance of forces in the UK – particularly in England – where a hard right is on the ascendant for the first time since the 1930s. Witness the murder of Joe Cox MP. Witness the fascist attack on Bookmarks, the radical bookshop in central London. Witness the rise to media prominence of Tommy Robinson, a seriously dangerous figure. In gentler times, Boris Johnson’s burka comments would have seen him relegated to outer darkness, as Enoch Powell’s infamous Rivers of Blood speech did for his political career. Today, in the middle of the Brexit crisis and a looming, existential split in the Tory party, Burkagate has opened a path for Boris to seize control.

Of course, Boris as Tory leader would likely see the Conservative Party splinter and facilitate the rise of a new centre party. After that, the electoral outcome under a first-past-the-post system becomes political Russian roulette. But progressives should not assume Boris and his band of Brexiteers would end up on the opposition benches. If a new centre party attracts Labour votes, then a militant, populist right under Boris could easily take advantage of a three-way split in the popular vote in England.

In Scotland a Boris victory in the Tory party could see a Ruth Davidson party emerge for real, though it would test Ms Davidson’s political leadership for the first time. But we should always beware of wishing for chaos among our political enemies as an easy route to our own success. Chaos has a nasty habit of favouring simplistic populists of the right like Boris Johnson. On the progressive left, we suffer from the historic decline in working-class solidarity that has accompanied deindustrialisation and the casualisation of employment. Fortunately, in Scotland, we have succeeded in uniting working-class aspirations with the idea of an independent, progressive Scotland. Let’s maintain that axis and not seek the chimera of extra Yes votes by pandering to neoliberal growth models.

Our response to the rise of a new populism under Boris Johnson is to answer the question he put to me in 2015. What do Scots want? Answer: another independence referendum – and soon.