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Everything Johnson has done so far, including huge spending promises on health and infrastructure and a tour of the UK immediately after he was appointed Conservative leader suggests he has his eyes on an election.

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Johnson has put in situ staff such as political strategist Dominic Cummings, mastermind behind the Vote Leave campaign, and stuffed his cabinet with hardline Brexiteers to steer voters away from his rival on the right – Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party.

Waiting in the wings to pick up the votes of anti-Brexit Conservative voters are the Lib Dems.

“It increasingly looks like – given the Vote Leave, ultra-hard Brexit complexion of the government – that the Conservatives are saying to Remain-voting, or even soft Brexit Tory voters, we are no longer interested in you,” said Chuka Umunna, the former Labour politician who co-founded the Change UK party before joining the Lib Dems.

Now under the leadership of the Scottish MP Jo Swinson, the first woman to run the party, the Lib Dems have been having a good run lately.

The party surged in the European Parliament elections in May, going from one seat to 16.

It then, by entering into a pact with the Green Party and the Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru, took the Brecon and Radnorshire parliamentary seat from the Conservatives.

An opinion poll by YouGov published last week put the Lib Dems close behind the Conservatives and, with 21 per cent of the vote, just one percentage point behind Labour as Remain voters desert both the main parties.

The Lib Dems currently have 13 MPs and the UK media is awash with rumours that others could be preparing to jump ship.

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Former Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, who is now an independent and pro-Remain Conservative MP Philip Lee, were considering over the summer whether to join the Lib Dems.

Talks were also being held with the ex-Tory Heidi Allen, MP for South Cambridgeshire, according to an article by Business Insider, who is now running a campaign for anti-Brexit parties to unite to stop the UK’s departure from the EU.

An article in The Spectator on Friday claimed that Plaid Cymru, the Green Party and the Lib Dems were in talks to stand down candidates in targeted seats to repeat the strategy’s success in last month’s by-election in Wales.

Journalist Nick Cohen claimed that the Lib Dems, Greens and Plaid Cymru would announce 30 joint candidates.

They would then announce 30 more a week later and a final 40 on September 6. Pro-Remain sitting MPs of both the Labour and Conservative parties would not be challenged.

Corbyn won 73 per cent of the vote in the 2017 general election, yet his constituency is staunchly Remain.

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Johnson’s own constituency in Uxbridge in west London could also be a target. Labour’s candidate there is very young and has in the past been accused of making anti-Semitic comments.

None of the pro-Remain parties have confirmed that an electoral pact is under way – on Twitter Saturday the Green Party – which is to the left of the Lib Dems but has just one MP at the present time – denied any deals had been done.

“Hey @NickCohen4 – a riveting read here,” the Green Party tweeted.

“We’re fascinated to hear news about these proposals. Can you tell us more?”

Given the success in the Brecon and Radnorshire, and the possibility such a pact would also give the Green Party some more parliamentary seats, Cohen could still be right.

“It’s not utterly unworkable nor completely far-fetched,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London.

“But without Labour participating it’s unlikely to do the trick for Remain.”

Many Green Party voters will never forgive the Liberal Democrats under the leadership of Nick Clegg, now a senior executive with Facebook, for entering into an alliance with the Conservative Party in 2010.

Their support, it has been argued, enabled the Conservatives to drive through their austerity programme.

Corbyn has ruled out any pact with Swinson.

“We would not be in this crisis if it wasn’t for the Lib Dems,” said the pro-Corbyn commentator Owen Jones in a video message on Twitter.

“They helped breed massive disillusionment and anger without which Brexit would not have happened.”

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Even alone, the Lib Dems seem certain to make gains.

They only need 45 votes to win the pro-Remain Richmond Park, their top target seat in England, from Johnson ally Zak Goldsmith, brother of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s former wife Jemima.

They narrowly lost the seat having briefly taken the seat from the Conservatives for six months after Goldsmith resigned and called a by-election in protest at the decision to expand Heathrow Airport.

Whatever happens in between with Brexit, the next election will be the first in the UK to be a four-party race more akin to the politics of mainland Europe, than the UK where politics have traditionally been Labour versus Conservative.

Neither Johnson nor Corbyn seem likely to now build the kind of mainstream coalition among voters that usually delivers governments with credible majorities.

The next election will be at least a four-horse race.

The irony being the UK political scene is becoming more and more like the coalition-led politics of most of mainland Europe.

If there is to be a new centrist force to stop Brexit as many hope, then, at the moment at least, the Lib Dems seem the best bet, but Remainers shouldn’t count on it.

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