Boris Johnson: No Prime Minister in living memory has so consistently, and so accurately, been branded a liar yet even in defeat he could only blame those around him

Prime Minister Boris Johnson took aim at his colleagues - branding them eccentrics with a herd mentality - as he addressed the nation in his resignation speech on the cobbles of Downing Street.

This was a Prime Minister who had the opportunity to lead one of the great reforming governments, thanks to a majority that was not only unassailable, but brought together a broad coalition of support, embracing traditional Labour seats in Yorkshire and the North as well as Conservative strongholds.

He was borne to office on a tide of goodwill and optimism, but squandered both because of his arrogance and disdain for integrity. Therein lies the tragedy of his downfall, for his country and his party.

A Conservative leader with the greatest popular support in three decades, which should have given him two terms as Premier, and who could have made an immense difference for the better, will be gone after two-and-a-half years and a miserly record of genuine achievement.

Despite his self-serving resignation speech in which he sought to blame others for losing the confidence of Conservative MPs, Mr Johnson is the architect of his own demise.

Instead of coherent policy, decisive leadership and statesman-like behaviour, Mr Johnson offered hubris, self-aggrandisement and dishonesty. He substituted empty boosterism for action on key objectives, principally levelling up on which little practical has happened, and rhetoric for solutions to pressing problems such as the economic crisis.

No Prime Minister in living memory has so consistently, and so accurately, been branded a liar. No other has been issued with a criminal penalty whilst in office. Yet Mr Johnson exhibited a lack of genuine contrition in the face of scandal and lockdown law-breaking.

His values were not those of the voters who gave him office, nor of the party whose reputation he so debased that in the end it turned on him in the certain belief that an electorate repelled by Mr Johnson’s antics would reject the Conservatives. A politician once lauded as his party’s greatest electoral asset was ultimately revealed to be its worst liability.

Many Conservatives stayed away during the final farewell speech by Boris Johnson who took a swipe at those around him when he referred to leaks from his teams.

It is a measure of how egregiously Mr Johnson placed his own interests ahead of the country’s that he allowed the mechanism of Government to collapse as he scrabbled to cling to power, with dozens of Ministers and aides resigning. Even now, it is unclear if they can be replaced by people willing to serve under him.

For whatever time he remains in office, the business of government must be run properly for the sake of the country’s stability. A new Cabinet is in place, and they must shoulder the responsibility for that happening, and for persuading MPs to serve as Ministers for Britain, and not for Mr Johnson, who has no authority left.

As a child, it was Boris Johnson’s loudly-trumpeted and first ambition to be “world king”; Britain’s people, and its constitution, granted the nearest thing they could possibly give to enable that wish, by trusting him to run the country. That trust was misplaced. In the end, the would-be king’s character flaws made him unfit to rule and his abdication inevitable.