Without his tribe, Boris Johnson shrank before our eyes

How do you kill off a strongman? How do you drain the political life from the brand of nationalist-populist leader that's dominated politics across the democratic world in recent times? Last week, we may just have got an answer.

- Jonathan Freedland

Never say never and all that, but we watched the air go out of the Boris Johnson balloon, the UK's former prime minister deflating before our eyes. While his fellow rightwing populists, the likes of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, continue to wreak or threaten havoc, it's instructive to work out what did for Johnson. It could even be a formula to follow.

You might think the magic bullet would be hard evidence of appalling behaviour. Johnson's appearance before the House of Commons committee on privileges revived memories not just of the details of Partygate - the trestle tables, the raised glasses - but of the very particular rage those revelations provoked.

Last week marked the third anniversary of a lockdown that was like nothing the country had ever endured before, requiring a suppression of the most elemental human instincts: to be close to others, to talk, to touch. The Partygate revelations stirred fury not only because they involved the rankest hypocrisy - those setting the rules were breaking them - but also because they suggested that the deprivations Britons had suffered were not, after all, universal or collective, but rather were somehow optional. If you were a mug, you followed the rules; if you were smart, you ignored them.