Watch: darts fans jeer Johnson

Oh dear. It appears that Boris Johnson’s love-in with the great British public appears to have well and truly concluded. Let’s hope that in the wake of ‘Partygate’, Omicron and various scandals, our under-fire Prime Minister didn’t turn on the darts last night for some much-needed respite.

For there, on primetime television, the crowd at London’s Alexandra Palace burst into loud and sustained chants of ‘Stand up if you hate Boris’ that echoed around the 2022 Darts World Championship arena. Others held up signs saying ‘All round to Boris’s for afters’ and with pictures of cheese and wine, branded ‘This is a business meeting.’

It’s not the first time a major Tory politician has faced that kind of treatment at a sporting arena. Famously at the 2012 Paralympics, the then-austerity Chancellor George Osborne was booed when he stepped up to present medals by the London crowd. But that was a spontaneous – and comparatively mild – reaction by the crowd to a man standing in front of them; arguably, jeering an absent premier for such a sustained period is far worse.