Boris Johnson has threatened Channel 4 over his own absolute moral cowardice

First the prime minister refused to take part in the debate, then he threatened to revoke Channel 4’s licence

We are too far down the rabbit hole now to even know if a line has been drawn. There are so many lines now it is as if all our little lives have been tapped out and cut up with Michael Gove’s bank card.

So we can only repeat, as a statement of fact, that today was the day when the prime minister began threatening to shut down actual TV channels for the crime of his own complete moral cowardice.

It is impossible to say whether we have already gone this far before. But this is where we are.

Boris Johnson refused to take part in Channel 4’s “leaders debate” on the climate emergency, just as he has refused to be interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Neil, and also refused even to be interviewed about whether or not he has refused the BBC’s Andrew Neil.

Where his podium should have been, Channel 4 placed a melting ice sculpture. The Conservative party sent Michael Gove in his place.

There is some uncertainty over who refused to allow Michael Gove to take part. Was it Channel 4 themselves? Was it the other party leaders? Given the other party leaders have done interviews with Andrew Neil, and Boris Johnson is refusing, they can hardly be blamed for not being the enablers to Boris Johnson’s utter shamelessness for a second time.

Gove, naturally, has responded by telling Jeremy Corbyn he’s scared. A good time to remember Michael Gove, who is less a human being and more just the Oxford Union accidentally made flesh, also likes to claim that the referendum was all about making the UK more welcoming to immigrants.

Still, the actual grownups over at the Conservative Central Office have responded by launching a formal complaint with Ofcom, and threatening to have Channel 4’s public broadcasting licence revoked.

This is the country we are now.

Who knows, perhaps, once we’ve “taken back control of our own laws”, other people being sanctioned entirely for Boris Johnson’s own failings will be the standard run of things.

“Prime minister, we’ve had one of the mothers on the phone again. Says it’s your daughter’s birthday. You’ve forgotten. Again.”

“Whoops. Righto. What shall we give her? Custodial or will 100 hours’ community service do?”

Arguably, it was going this way three and a half years ago, when Dominic Cummings threatened ITV with legal action over including Nigel Farage in their EU referendum debate show, telling them there would be “consequences”.

There were, inevitably, no consequences.

By the time of the second advertising break, a puddle had begun to gather on the floor beneath the Boris Johnson ice sculpture. I am reliably informed the Boris Johnson ice sculpture has already prepared court documents to suppress the puddle’s existence.

By virtue of his own non-attendance, Boris Johnson had created quite literally the exact kind of mess he had himself shown incapable of clearing up from the floor of a flooded optician’s just three weeks ago.

So there you have it. Create a mess that you can’t clear up then blame someone else. Whatever else goes wrong, the metaphors can always be relied upon to write themselves.