SKY NEWS correspondent Beth Rigby skewered Boris Johnson at his campaign launch this week, telling him: “You brandish your Brexit credentials, but many of your colleagues worry about your character.” Johnson hammed up his buffoon act, asking why he was being questioned about his “parrot.” Rigby continued: “You brought shame on your party when you described veiled Muslim women as letterboxes and bank robbers.” Unsurprisingly, the audience of the Tory Party faithful booed.

But Johnson skilfully turned it round to a defence of politicians not “muffling and veiling our language, not speaking as we find – covering everything up in bureaucratic platitudes, when what they want to hear is what we genuinely think.”

The trouble is, he’s right. His own modus operandi is that of a total fake — but like Donald Trump, he’ll be let off thanks to the failures of the wider political class.