At PMQs Boris Johnson tried to bluff through a defection, Keir Starmer’s ridicule and David Davis’s Cromwellian condemnation
What a difference a day makes. On Tuesday Big Dog had been Hang Dog. Not remorseful exactly, as that would require a level of empathy and self-knowledge that is well beyond him. But certainly abject. Sorry for finding himself in such a mess, if not for causing it. Sorry that he had reached the end of the road.
Come prime minister’s questions, the trademark defences were back in place. The desperation of a leader, already on borrowed time, who is having to beg for yet another last chance. It’s a sight with which countless betrayed wives and girlfriends are all too familiar. First there was the surefire tell that Boris Johnson is about to start lying: the smirk (though these days it’s rarer to find a time when he’s telling the truth).
