Johnson's right, the system stinks - how else did be become PM?
A serial liar and narcissist has inadvertently exposed the uncomfortable truth that lies at the heart of our democracy.
Of course our political system is in hock to vested interests and bad faith actors. Of course it perpetuates grave injustices to serve troubling ends, often in the name of reason and fair play.
This is a system that Johnson should know better than any other - it is the system which propelled him to power.
The question that should preoccupy us in the days and weeks ahead is not why the former PM fell from grace so dramatically. It is certainly not - as, an admittedly diminished, group of allies and media cheerleaders speculate - whether he may yet rise again.
It is how such a man with such obvious flaws, which were exposed throughout his time in public life, was able to ascend to our very highest office.
The question is not just whether one person deliberately misled Parliament, but whether a massed collective of MPs, cabinet ministers, commentators and newspaper outlets deliberately misled the British people.
Johnson was not as it turns out an amiable rogue; he was a shameless charlatan with a track-record for dishonesty, a contempt for the rules and a disdain for our institutions. This was abundantly clear from the multiple controversies that dogged his time as a journalist and politician.
His prior behaviour was evidence every bit as damning as the dossier of statements that the Commons' privileges committee have spent months poring over and yet for years it was deflected and defended and downplayed.
Jeremy Corbyn's former spokesman had once noted how the Tories had the enviable ability to play politics on "easy mode" and arguably no-one had it easier than Johnson.
We might wonder why in his recent flurry of bitter, conspiracy-laden rants, the ex-leader seems utterly incensed that anyone should dare call him to account.
The answer may lie in the fact that rarely has he ever faced meaningful consequences. The lesson he has learned from his years in the public eye is that cock ups, cover ups and controversies are grounds not for censure but promotion.
An early sacking for making-up quotes did not prevent a lucrative stint in journalism. A key role in cynically derailing the career of one Conservative Prime Minister did not stop another installing him in cabinet. A short-lived and widely criticised period as Foreign Secretary was not a bar to ending up in Downing Street.
The track record of failure being rewarded could never be put down to one man, no matter the size of his ego or his apparent lack of shame. Unlike the Wizard of Oz, the illusion has been worked not just by a single individual skulked behind the curtain but a very powerful lobbying operation.
How else do you explain that an Old Etonian - whose wealth was such that he once dismissed a £250,000 deal to pen a weekly newspaper column as "chicken feed"- was able to pose as a man of the people?
How was it that someone who reputedly brushed off industry concerns about Brexit with a declaration of "fuck business" was hailed by The Times as a promising torchbearer for pragmatic government?
Just why did the purported bastion of middle class values - The Daily Mail - repeatedly laud a leader well-known for his repeated affairs and vague answers to questions about how many children he had.
Perhaps most damningly, how could a man who one former boss described as "morally bankrupt" and whose whole career was characterised by ruthless self-interest be presented for so long as overall a jolly decent chap?
Bizarrely any suggestions that Johnson was in actual fact "a nasty piece of work" - as then BBC journalist Eddie Mair had once put it - were rare. A man who threatened to "let the bodies pile high in their thousands" during the Covid pandemic - a threat followed through in the nightmarish winter that followed - was repeatedly portrayed as the very essence of British bonhomie.
In considering the level of protection afforded to the likes of Johnson it is worth comparing him with a man whose hopes of becoming PM were ended at the same election in which Johnson began his own march to power.
Labour leader Ed Miliband was effectively deemed unfit for No 10 on the basis of unflattering photos of him eating a bacon sandwich and a "he knifed his own brother" narrative - after he had defeated his sibling David in a leadership contest five years earlier.
Paper after paper queued up to mock Miliband's voice and appearance. He was often dubbed a member of the "North London Metropolitan Elite" - which sounds awfully like the sort of anti-Semitic barb that tabloids would come to take very seriously in subsequent years.
His Dad was branded "the man who hated Britain" in a notorious Mail feature on his late father Ralph's left wing politics. There were suggestions that he felt compelled to marry his long-time girlfriend because of concerns that an unmarried PM was simply too unconventional.
What is notably lacking if you search "scandal" on Miliband's Wikipedia page - not a definitive source I admit, but not a bad precis of any political career - only four mentions come-up.
Two reference the fact he emerged as one of the "saints" in the Daily Telegraph's much-publicised expose on MPs' expenses claims. The other two refer to his criticism of the phone-hacking furore which of course engulfed some of his most venomous critics in the right wing media.
In fact his tenure as opposition leader was almost entirely devoid of any suggestion of personal or political impropriety.
The case is obviously instructive of the way the establishment creates a protective shell around its favoured politicians; you only need compare Johnson's political CV with Miliband's to see the extent of the disparity.
He will of course be far from the last leader to benefit. It should not be forgotten that Liz Truss - whose installation and disintegration as PM took place mere weeks after Johnson's own departure from Downing Street - was also the favoured candidate of the Tory press, party donors and most of the then cabinet.
Her flaws were very different from Johnson's - dogmatic rather than opportunistic, charmless rather than feckless - but it was another obvious example of an individual whose ambition far outstripped her ability.
Like Johnson Truss has invested a good deal of time blaming her downfall not on obvious and abundant misjudgments and character flaws but the intervention of insidious forces which stood ready to snuff out her political project.
The irony is of course that both leaders were ousted not by revenge-filled Remainers or "woke" civil servants or antagonistic opposition parties. They were in fact finally filleted by many of those who had once been among their most enthusiastic cheerleaders.
The fact that this deluded, dangerous pair were ejected in unprecedented ignominy is of course welcome. But the cheerleaders are still there and their own very shaky relationship with the truth and the impact it has on our politics and our democracy will be far harder to fight off.
It's not often I agree with ex-Telegraph editor and ardent Conservative Max Hastings, but his comments today get to the nub of the problem. It's not all about Boris Johnson, it's about the people who put him in power...
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