The Prime Minister must go

It isn’t just the fines. It isn’t just the behaviour that has led to the Prime Minister being issued a fixed penalty notice by the Metropolitan police. It isn’t just the lies told about that behaviour, lies issued with the most sweeping confidence inside and outside the House of Commons. It isn’t just the fines and the indifference to the rules he and his ministers set for everyone else and demanded they follow – on pain of arrest – and the lying about that behaviour and the cavalier assumption that public opinion can go hang. It is all of those things wrapped together.

All of this makes the Prime Minister’s position intolerable and a fellow possessing a greater amount of self-awareness or – to employ an old-fashioned term – honour, would read the room and do the decent thing. That there are ample grounds for doubting this Prime Minister will do the appropriate thing is itself a further reminder of how standards in public life have been corroded.