'Boriswave' tantrum shows true measure of our ex-PM

Boris Johnson was always a shameless figure – part of his perverse charm, you might say.

- By SEAN O'GRADY

Still, to this day, he refuses to take responsibility for the damage he, above all others, has done to this country – campaigning for a Brexit he likely never really believed in, and then implementing it as prime minister in such a roughshod manner as to leave this country hamstrung. I imagine the fact that the subsequent collapse in inward investment and costly trade restrictions hastened the Tories to their landslide defeat last year, and possible extinction, is not a matter he chooses to dwell on as he potters around his Oxfordshire moated mansion.

Yet you can sense some lingering dissatisfaction. An appearance on The Telegraph’s Daily T podcast this week proved he is as unwilling to take responsibility for his actions as ever he was - a tendency that dates back, according to his biographers, at least to his time at Eton, where he also learned how to dissemble. Specifically, not least because of the fuss made about it by Nigel Farage, he has had to confront the “Boriswave” — 2.6 million immigrants who came into the country entirely legally under his administration.

As ever, the excuses are ready to hand, just as they were while he was trying to run the country. There were the refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong (they don’t count, he implies). During Covid, immigration was negligible, so it was bound to bounce back, wasn’t it? The EU students came back to finish their courses. The Home Office didn’t have any real-time figures, so “we were flying blind”.