THE FANTASY PRIME MINISTER

Dishonesty has been the one constant in Boris Johnson's career. In the end, the deceit proved too much to bear

- Jonathan Freedland

Lies and a brazen contempt for the rules powered his rise; lies and a brazen contempt for the rules brought his fall. Which means the political odyssey of Boris Johnson has a curious symmetry. Except that what began as defects in the personality of one man ended as defects in his party and his government, inflicting great damage on the entire country.

The lies that proved his undoing are now all too familiar. The last, fatal lie was his claim that he had not been told directly of complaints of sexual misconduct committed by the former deputy chief whip Chris Pincher, a claim rapidly exposed as false in a rare intervention from a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, Simon McDonald. It turned out that Johnson had indeed been briefed about Pincher, and that once again Johnson had not told the truth.

But last week, though that newest dishonesty was the last straw first for Sajid Javid, then minutes later for Rishi Sunak, and, over the dizzying 36 hours that followed, dozens of others, triggering a wave of resignations and withdrawals of backbench support that ultimately brought Johnson's removal, it was hardly what broke the Johnson premiership.

Instead, it was the pattern of repeated mendacity that proved too much to bear both for Johnson's previous chancellor and his hastily installed successor, his health secretary and a slew of more junior colleagues, a pattern so firmly established in the public mind that even his closest lieutenants could deny it no longer. Central to it is the scandal known as Partygate.

Johnson had stood before the country in one of the darkest hours of the postwar era and promised that we were all in this together, that the lockdown regulations that kept loved ones from each other, even as they drew their last breath, applied to everyone including him.