Tide finally turns on scandal-hit PM Boris Johnson… no other politician could have got away with his litany of horrors

In what has been a bad week for Johnson and his chum Donald Trump, the PM got a bloody nose as 148 of his MPs turned against him in the confidence vote last week with 211 MPs backing him, a majority of just 63.

Commentators say the odds are stacking up against Johnson staying at the helm for much longer but it’s clear the Great Pretender/Survivor will do his damnedest to brazen it out.

And if he got through that Commons vote despite all his cack-handed cock-ups in the past over Brexit; the no-sea border promises, his early weak response to the Covid crisis (offset later admittedly by the success of the vaccines roll-out); Tory sleaze; Dominic Cummings; Partygate and his fine plus a raft of other scandals, it’s hard to see just what will bring him down.

My distrust of the mop-top muppet goes back a lot further than his coming to power in Downing Street and I’ve consistently argued that he is a duplicitous disaster.

And just in case you’ve forgotten some of his greatest tits-ups let me remind you of one or two of them

Like the time he was sacked by the Times for making up a quote for a major story; or when he was sacked as shadow arts minister for lying about an affair; or when he made the plight of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran worse by wrongly claiming she was teaching journalists in the country when she was doing no such thing; or when he said Muslim face veils were oppressive and made women look like letterboxes; or when he used offensive slurs against gay men in a newspaper column; or when he attacked the amount of money being “spaffed up against a wall” in historic child abuse investigations.

In his time some of his more contentious utterances have angered the city of Liverpool; the people of Papua New Guinea; the entire continent of Africa; the French nation and Hillary Clinton.

No other politician could have got away with the litany of horrors but the British people definitely took Johnson to their hearts with a ‘that’s just Boris’ attitude, though the boos for his arrival and departure for the Queen’s Jubilee service at St Paul’s Cathedral was a clear indication that people are now — at last — wearying of him. Johnson was also apparently heckled last week by fellow diners when he went for lunch at a London restaurant where his son works.

The prime minister’s measured response as he left the eatery was to give his noisy neighbours the finger.

But last week also saw Johnson come out fighting in the midst of the cost of living crisis with more pledges on housing and taxes clearly designed to bolster his support.

However, his enemies say his words are often worthless as the DUP will no doubt testify over what he’s said about Northern Ireland and where his promised legislation on changes to the protocol have been delayed again, until next week.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, a House of Representatives select committee have claimed that Boris Johnson’s crony Donald Trump orchestrated last year’s Capitol riot in an “attempted coup” and had “lit the flame” of the attack on Congress.

Recordings have been played of members of Trump’s inner circle including his daughter Ivanka rubbishing the ex-president’s allegations of fraud during his failed election bid.

Trump’s response to the hearing even before it opened was totally predictable. He described it as “a political hoax”.