Is it optimistic to imagine that there may have been times in his career when Boris Johnson experienced a distant intimation that there were minor, occasional benefits to be derived from sticking to the rules? Perhaps when he was expelled from this newspaper for fabricating quotes? Or when Michael Howard fired him as shadow culture secretary for lying about an extramarital affair? Or now?
If the surreal vision of a conscientious Johnson (combed, industrious, oratorically lucid) ever did loom in our prime minister’s daydreams, he wisely dismissed it. Whatever his present troubles, his career is a testament to how far you can get by disregarding the rules. That many of life’s apparently intractable moral boundaries turn out, when transgressed, either hardly to exist at all