Boris Johnson, our Flatulent Leader, likes to imagine he is a reincarnation of Sir Winston Churchill.  Not that I remember Sir Winston walking around in concertina trousers (they are more reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp), his hair deliberately scruffed, leading his way through a national crisis by means of lies, lies and more lies.  Nor do I recall him offering such inspirational oratory as “fuck business,” nor describing government policy as “polishing a turd.”

But there are similarities.    On occasion Sir Winston conducted government from his bed – and, perish the thought, his bath – with his poodle (who he fed an unending supply of chocolates) beside him and a parrot on his head.  Poodles are nasty, cringing curs, for ever running to their master with their pom-poms between their legs,  snapping when  safety on the lead.  But I digress.  Johnson, too, has his poodles.  In his case they lounge around the cabinet office, fed tempting morsels of Brexit and such like; and, of course, he has his parrot, Pee-pee Patel, squawking foul policy, learnt by rote,  ingested not digested.

The key difference is that whilst by the end of his time in office, Sir Winston was unfit for government, Johnson was unfit before he ever crossed the threshold of Number 10.