The Tories won’t be fool enough to fall for Boris Johnson again

Johnson’s cheer chorus within the party is a noisy minority, according to surveys by ConservativeHome. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

The ancient Greeks believed that before a man could be reincarnated he had first to drink the amnesiating waters of the Lethe, one of the rivers of the underworld. Only by completely obliterating his past life could he embark upon another.

So ostentatious a classicist as Boris Johnson doubtless knows this – and to read his letter announcing his intention to resign from parliament, he seems to have wasted no time taking the obliviating plunge.