Boris Johnson’s bizarre private life is a matter of public interest. Jeremy Hunt cannot duck away from it

Johnson wants to become prime minister of this country in the same manner in which other people break into houses

Jeremy Hunt’s response to the news that the police attended a reported incident of domestic abuse at Boris Johnson’s flat in the middle of the night has been to put on a hi-vis tabard and sail a miniature plough dredger around the port of Bristol.

Jeremy Hunt is fighting an election campaign, and has made clear that he will not allow stories about Boris Johnson’s private life to distract him. We should well believe him, because thus far, he hasn’t even been distracted from his election campaign by the fact that there isn’t really an election happening, not least as there aren’t really any voters. So no one can be shocked when he sticks to his guns with resolute determination, and is just as determined not to actually fire them.

Jeremy Hunt is unfailingly polite and unspeakably nice. If, unthinkable though it is, Jeremy Hunt were to remove his hi-vis clothing during some kind of factory visit, at an inopportune moment, and find himself sliced directly down the middle by an industrial band saw, one imagines his insides would have “Head Boy at Charterhouse” written all the way down them like a stick of Blackpool rock.

Nothing will shake Hunt from his conviction to keep it all polite, all friendly, all above board. Not even the certain defeat he is currently staring down the barrel of. He is, at least in his own image, a good guy. And where do good guys tend to finish?.

Meanwhile Boris Johnson’s media fan club – Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Priti Patel, Johnny Mercer, to name just a few of the very worst offenders – gladly go on the radio or the TV channels whenever they are asked, to big up the “character” of their de facto boss. Ordinary people love him, they say.

He can bring the country back together. Meanwhile, this character, this great unifying force, this Etonian Obama, lives under self-imposed house arrest. (Indeed, it would be nice if we were all able to look back in a few years at what really should be “peak Boris Johnson”. Which is, having placed himself under house arrest on the advice of his former Tory press officer and campaign manager girlfriend, he still manages to screw everything up, from inside his house, with his former Tory press officer and campaign manager girlfriend. Sadly peak Boris Johnson is a height we are not even close to reaching.)

The people, the ones who the Conservative party expect to vote for them, want a few simple questions answered. How many children have you got? When did you last see, write to, speak to or acknowledge the existence of your 10-year-old daughter, whom you connived in court to suppress the existence of from becoming public knowledge? These things are a matter of public interest. In the last case, a High Court judge said as much at the time.

Boris Johnson wants to become prime minister of this country in the same manner in which other people break into houses. He has now pulled out of his appearance in a TV debate this week, hosted by Sky News.

Jeremy Hunt is calling him a coward for doing so. But Jeremy Hunt is also the only person who will have the opportunity to ask him the questions people want to know about, and to which the answers are, unquestionably, a matter of public interest.

The longer his hi-vis election campaign pretends it can’t see it, the less right he will have to call the other a coward.