A Matter Of Inevitability

The email subject line began “pathological megalomaniac”, and I clicked on it because I just assumed…

There followed an extraordinary tale of greed and hubris, though it turned out to be about a banker rather than Boris.

Spinning Boris has always been a tough job since the chaos has always been constant, even going back to his days as a journalist, when his copy was notoriously late and light on research.

I’m already looking forward to how he tries to spin all of this in later life, as he marches, we assume, from speaking gig to speaking gig. Since his appeal is supposed to be that he is funny, will he laugh at himself, or not?

As he once said: “There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed opportunities for fresh disasters.”

I was surprised to find myself feeling sorry for him last night as the disasters rolled.

He is so desperate to stay Prime Minister that he has persuaded himself that this is possible, a degree of self-belief you have to admire, in a way.

The mystery for me remains the people who thought his premiership was going to be anything other than like this.

For our Find Out Now poll today we asked a nationally representative panel of 2273 people if they thought Johnson can remain Prime Minister – 63% say no. Only 7% of women say “yes”.

We also asked who should be the next leader of the Conservative Party.

Rishi Sunak comes top among Tory voters, though there are shout outs for Dominic Raab and Liz Truss.

You can see the full results below.