Surviving from day to day, battered PM Boris Johnson has haemorrhaged both authority and appeal, and that will never return.
He is prepared to damage the future of the Conservative Party, Britain and democracy itself in order to cling to office.
The question is just how much damage will the PM be permitted to inflict before Tory MPs do the right thing and dump the charlatan.
Bitter one-time chief adviser and Brexi t co-conspirator Dominic Cummings lied to save his own skin and to sneak a referendum result.
Yet sometimes this Rasputin-like figure is honest about Johnson, a person he is determined to topple.
The avenger’s latest volley against a Big Ben bong fool obsessed with monuments to himself would be injurious if even half-true.
Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick harmed herself and, more importantly, the police with a clumsy intervention as Johnson’s human shield, outrageously seeking to censor civil servant Sue Gray’s imminent report into No10 parties.
You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to challenge plod’s big-footing. Johnson would accuse Putin of authoritarianism and state corruption had a Moscow police chief – controversially reappointed by the president – refused for weeks to investigate alleged Kremlin law-breaking until, on the eve of a potentially damaging report, a probe is finally announced.
So the report must then be filleted.
Playing for time as he did over public funds and access given to lover Jennifer Arcuri when London mayor, Johnson relies on interest waning.
But the anticipated molten public backlash against April’s pay packet-emptying and election promise-breaking NI increases might leave Johnson rueful for the time when boozy bashes dominated conversations.
Lassoing Johnson and Rishi Sunak to justify jointly a painful rise in the year of the squeeze didn’t disguise the Chancellor’s ambition to be Prime Minister.
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And the unofficial leadership contest is already underway when soldier Tom Tugendhat admitted his desire to conquer No10.
Yes, Cressida Dick has gifted Johnson some breathing space but Cummings will never stop.
Labour’s best bet is for the mortally wounded PM to keep limping on.
Every day that his MPs protect him is another day signalling that the fundamental problem isn’t this bad ’un in Downing Street.
Rather it’s the Conservative Party in Government that’s wrong and advertising why radical change is needed.
