Farewell and good riddance

Boris Johnson achieves his place in history - as the worst prime minister in living memory.

Fittingly, it ends in disgrace. Condemned by his peers and equally condemned by the public, Boris Johnson’s resignation statement marked a new low, even by his already subterranean standards. He railed against a “witch-hunt” and a “kangaroo court”, disregarding the reality that Conservative MPs make up a majority of members sitting on the Commons privileges committee that, we understand, has found that Johnson was - are you ready for this? - not wholly truthful in his dealings with parliament.

History will record that the period when the Conservative party was led by Boris Johnson and Labour by Jeremy Corbyn was a time when Britain’s two leading political parties contrived to offer voters a choice between the intolerable and the impossible. You can have your politics any way you like, so long as it is ghastly. A genuine nadir, the memory of which still prompts a shudder. Yes, it really happened and yes, it was just as bad as you remember.

That is also the context in which Johnson’s g…