Boris’s dwindling bunch of supporters must now come clean

Oh for heaven’s sake, come off it. British politics has long had a comfortable relationship with the absurd but this week – not yet over, its revelations not yet exhausted – takes a very pretty biscuit nonetheless. I do not imagine that ‘Downing Street apologises to the Queen for party revels’ is quite the kind of headline Conservative prime ministers dream of.

And while Boris Johnson has a copper-clad alibi for the suitcase-of-booze party in as much as he was at Chequers that night, it remains the case – as has always been the case – that a government is led from the top. Consequently, the character of the man or woman at its pinnacle slowly but surely informs other aspects of the government’s behaviour. It is a question of culture. And who can be surprised that a government led by a man famously impatient with rules, regulations and sundry other curbs on his own behaviour might in time be staffed by folk similarly impatient with such trivial things?

I know.