'Boris Johnson's days in No 10 are numbered... just one more push and he'll be out'

One of the things new ­parents do is buy the newspapers ­published on the day of the birth so their little one can see what was going on in the world when they arrived.

I’m not sure Boris Johnson would have been to the newsagents this week, given what the papers were saying when his latest progeny was born.

(Incidentally, Google searches for “how many children does Boris Johnson have” went up by, and I kid you not, 9,900% this week. I reckon the man himself might have been on the search engine. Hard to keep track.)

It feels like only a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the sharks were circling the increasingly beleaguered PM.

It’s gone a little bit beyond that now, to the point that if this were Jaws it would be the bit near the end where the boat has been eaten and there’s nowhere left to run. Or swim.

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The talk in Westminster now is about when, rather than if. Letters have gone in already and many more will be written over the weekend. The feeling is that somehow, if the No.10 parties don’t get the PM, the wallpaper investigation will.

Either way, Mr Johnson is fatally damaged. The sheer horror of parties going on while everyone else was locked up has cut through. How could it not?

The biggest danger for Mr Johnson was the shine coming off Brand Boris.

If he could have muddled through with his “loveable rogue, man of the people, who would you rather have a pint with” act, he could have survived and probably won the next election. That plan was utterly reliant on the mask not slipping.

On his way out? PM Boris Johnson (PA)

At no cost could the line “one rule for them, one rule for us” be allowed to stick and let us see the real character beneath – the elitist charlatan, uncaring, totally ill-equipped for a serious job at a serious time.

Maybe wallpaper will get him. Maybe it will be the by-election where the Lib Dems are now odds-on favourite.

My own thought is that the killer blow will come from his own backbenches. There is a very serious rebellion underway about the vote on Plan B in Parliament next week.

There are MPs openly briefing against the PM, and the hand of Theresa May – who does not like, and does not forgive Mr Johnson – is never far away. That might be what does him.

That would be fitting, more so than parties or wallpaper. Mr Johnson is a classicist – Balliol College, Oxford, if memory serves. He’s looking at an ending described by the Roman poet Ovid.

The one where Actaeon, the hunter, gets caught spying on Artemis as she’s bathing. As punishment, young Actaeon is turned into a stag, chased through the forest then killed by his own hounds. My own education did not hit such lofty heights and my own philosophies are not so grounded in the ancient world.

I learned most of my outlook from American sitcoms. Seinfeld, for example.

“Ending a relationship is a lot like knocking over a Coke machine. You can’t do it in one go, you have to rock it back and forth.”

Same for Prime Ministers. That’s where we are now, the momentum gathering, the endgame.

One more push…