Towards the end, Boris Johnson looked exhausted. He was a marathon runner staggering through the finishing tape, a boxer slumped against the ropes. Though perhaps that’s no surprise, judging by what the Covid inquiry had just heard about his woeful inability to focus forensically on the detail of policy or follow a scientific argument.
Two whole days of being repeatedly confronted by evidence of his own inadequacies – plus accounts of his rage at having to shut down the economy just to save what he reportedly dismissed as old people “who will die anyway soon” – were always going to be a struggle, and yet he was still not the biggest loser from this unedifying episode. That would be his hapless successor Rishi Sunak.
