He may be the most morally bankrupt Prime Minister the UK has had to endure in more than a century, but somehow Boris Johnson survived a vote of No Confidence and remains Prime Minister – for now.

Of course, outside of the “payroll vote” – that is, those MPs paid to do government jobs – he lost heavily, but win he did, and so on he limps, wounded, angry, and running out of time.

What he’ll do next is the talk of Westminster.

Johnson knows that history is littered with the wreckage of Prime Ministerial careers who despite surviving a no confidence vote, were gone in a matter of months.

So, given that, I really don’t expect him to just quietly wait for the next General Election to arrive.

His options are extremely limited, but what he has, due to a recent change in the law, is the power to call a snap General Election, whenever he likes and without even consulting parliament.

Johnson’s situation reminds me of that classic Paul Newman and Robert Redford film Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, in which twice they’re completely out of options, bar gambling on a totally reckless, million-to-one shot to save their skins.

In the first scene, when being hotly pursued by the law, they decide their only option is to leap off a high cliff into a fast-flowing river.

Their second gamble comes when they’re holed up in a shack in Bolivia, surrounded by soldiers and they decide their only chance to survive is to burst out, all guns blazing.

Having miraculously survived the cliff jump, they must have thought they were invincible and could ride their luck one more time. Of course, they couldn’t and the inevitable happened.

I don’t know if when Boris Johnson looks in the mirror, he sees Paul Newman or Robert Redford looking back at him, but there is a similarity in as much as he’ll see a man who has completely run out road, has no cards left to play and whose enemies are closing in on him.

What he’ll also see, however, is a man who has his immediate future entirely in his own hands.

It is very possible, therefore, that he could throw some money around, shore up his base with some populist rhetoric, get his media cheerleaders back on board, then cut-and-run with yet another unscheduled, unplanned General Election this side of Christmas.

The gambler in Johnson will convince himself that this would be his jumping off a high cliff into the Animus River moment.

I suspect those with a more realistic view will now see 10 Downing Street as bearing more than a passing resemblance to a shack in the Bolivian mountains.