Boris Johnson’s Brexit spin can work only for so long – he’ll soon be hoist with his own petard

In the end, Rudd and Jo Johnson’s resignations will matter. It shows that there is a limit to the amount of madness that ‘normal’ Conservatives will stand for

Boris Johnson isn’t the man Amber Rudd wants driving her home at the end of the evening. Or, it would seem, driving the nation off a cliff. Maybe in one of the wine-crate buses that the prime minister once weirdly claimed to make in his spare time, with us, the British public, as his little cork people, smiling our painted-on smiles as he vrooms the rickety wooden vehicle towards the precipice.

The resignation of the former work and pensions secretary may not have saved us from this peculiar fate. But it capped a week that began as a thriller, middled out as farce and finally assumed the dimensions of tragedy. Johnson lost his majority, his votes, his friends, his family, and finally his s***. He was rambling like a haunted satnav as he delivered the most bizarre prime ministerial speech anyone can remember in front of the West Yorkshire Police on Wednesday. By the time his literal brother Jo Johnson resigned, he was said to be fighting actual tears.