Boris Johnson is Mr Brexit. Elect him PM and give him a chance to deliver it

This leadership election is special to The Telegraph readership for two reasons. First, most – if not all – of those voting are also our readers, and while that’s true of many Conservative contests, this is a rare occasion when they are picking not just a party leader but a Prime Minister. They are looking for a PM who can fulfil a very clear task: to honour the referendum and deliver Brexit.

Second, one of the candidates is a man our readership knows very well. In 1989, this newspaper sent a 24-year-old Boris Johnson to Brussels as a correspondent, and readers were able to follow his progress as he grew bemused, frustrated and exasperated with an EU bureaucracy hell-bent on wrapping Britain in red tape. Finally, he concluded that the UK was better off out. Most of our readers have, down the years, come to the same realisation.

Mr Johnson is Mr Brexit. He put his finger on the problem; he led the campaign to leave; he won the 2016 referendum. And now he has a chance to wrest the project back from the politicians who have nearly destroyed it with their opposition or ineptitude.

He’s not the only name on the ballot paper: Jeremy Hunt has had a good campaign, proving that he is an able politician and an enthusiast for business. He should have a bright future at the very top of government. But Mr Hunt voted Remain in the referendum, and he hasn’t committed himself 100 per cent to leaving the EU on October 31 – with or without a deal.

For many Tories these things have become the litmus test for leadership. A policy as radical and far-reaching as Brexit has to be led by a politician who fully believes in it, who is Eurosceptic through and through. Theresa May’s leadership has illustrated the dangers of chasing a compromise with Remainers. It is simply outrageous that three years after voting to leave, Britain is still stuck in the EU.

Mr Johnson grasps that Britain put its red lines in the wrong place, that the essential issue is sovereignty, and that unless the EU thinks that Britain is willing to walk away, it won’t renegotiate a Withdrawal Agreement that is totally unacceptable to a democrat.

Mr Johnson also sees that it’s not just leaving the EU that matters but what you do next. With tax cuts and investment in infrastructure at home, there are real opportunities in the world beyond Europe: trading with developing nations, attracting top talent, jumping aboard the technological revolution. In a wonderfully upbeat interview with this newspaper, Mr Johnson set out a vision for Britain as "the greatest place on Earth."

As any regular reader of his columns will know, Mr Johnson is a million miles away from the sub-Trumpian dinosaur his critics bizarrely characterise him as. He is a liberal. His politics come from goodwill. His ability to articulate and spread confidence is one of the key reasons he won the London mayoralty twice, beating a charismatic Marxist in a Labour city.

His record mattered, naturally: Mr Johnson cut crime, built houses and assembled an excellent team that, among other things, helped manage the Olympics. But, yes, he is also a triumph of a very British kind of style as well as substance – and what is wrong with that?

Mr Johnson is a brilliant communicator in an age that is crying out for character. He is a politician with a rare ability to reach across the barriers of class and region, at a time when the country is sick of miserabilism and of a Tory leadership that has allowed Brexit to be parodied as a parochial attempt to turn the clock back when, really, it is about self-confidence and renewal. Politics needs to be revivified. There is a huge untapped demand among voters for a genuinely popular Conservatism with all its faith in the individual and nation, and a leader who can knit together the true blue shires and the working-class towns that, thanks to Brexit, are voting Tory for the first time ever.

Our readers will be conscious that it is the very survival of the Conservative Party that is at stake. According to the latest polls, Britain is now a four-party system, and unless the Tories deliver Brexit – and are seen to deliver it – then the centre-Right coalition will split and a Left-wing alliance might take power that would move the country in an ominous direction. Perhaps permanently.

Such an historic task demands a character of appropriate size, which is why the usual platitudes of consensus-building or middle-ground chasing are a waste of breath. With a sense of urgency, therefore, we recommend that any of our readers who have a vote use it to support Mr Johnson. He deserves a chance to realise an ambition he has spent his entire career fighting for – liberating Britain from the European Union and restoring its faith in itself.