So it turns out Boris Johnson is a liar. Who knew? Answer: anyone who has ever had anything to do with him.
There has been something weird this week, watching journalists who have fawned over him for so long, suddenly pontificating on how terrible it would be if Johnson lied to Lord Geidt, his ethics advisor.
For heaven’s sake, he lied to the Queen ages ago, about proroguing Parliament, so why the shock at him lying to a mere former private secretary of hers?
And while I share the anger, there is something a bit weird too that it has taken a leaked video of a fake briefing to get that anger in the country to boiling point, when you think of the far bigger lies that Johnson told to win the Brexit referendum, and then win an election on the back of an oven-ready deal which turned out to be nothing of the sort.
Before too long, the parties and the wallpaper will fade from memory, Allegra Stratton will go back to being a journalist somewhere, and Johnson himself may be ejected from office in disgrace.
But the effect of his lies will be with us for a lot longer.
Of course he must take the lion’s share of the responsibility for the mess his government is in. But his enablers must share it.
A Cabinet that has gone along with his mendacious and chaotic ways. Tory MPs who, with all too few exceptions, have failed to call him out. A media which again, with all too few exceptions, has indulged him when its job should be to help hold him to account.
Recent events have damaged him, possibly beyond repair. Yet our catastrophic COVID death rates – ‘let the bodies pile high’ – and the contracting corruption should have damaged him more.
The damage he has done to our strategic alliances, and to the peace process in Northern Ireland, should have damaged him more.
The record NHS waiting lists (well under way pre-COVID,) soaring inequality, soaring use of food banks, cuts to universal credit, the shabby treatment of nurses, doctors, teachers and police should all have damaged him more.
If it takes a Christmas Party to be the tipping point, so be it. But the political pain he is suddenly feeling has been a long time in the making and frankly, I have been shocked at the lack of rage at the long litany of lies, gaslighting and acts of incompetence ever since he took over.
Can we at least, as a country, make this the point at which we start to wake up to the damage that can be done when government falls into the hands of bad people?
While the debate centred on the fall-out from the party, laws were being passed, on policing and protesting, or asylum and immigration, that would have been unthinkable under Margaret Thatcher, let alone Labour.
Johnson has to go, and the moment the Tory Party decides he is more liability than winner, he will be gone.
But for Labour, it is the Tory Party it has to have in its sights; in power for eleven years, which have achieved next to nothing of good for this country.
Labour cannot allow yet another change of Tory Prime Minister to be passed off as though it is a change of government. The entire Tory Party has to be taken on, and the country made to see Labour has better people, better ideas, better policies, and a better understanding of what Britain needs for the future.
Johnson, through his venality and uselessness, has opened the door. Labour needs to charge through it.
