Privileges Committee's verdict on Boris Johnson may not matter as he increasingly looks like yesterday’s man - Bill Carmichael

I rather tartly replied that some of us have full-time jobs to attend to and could not afford the luxury of staring at the gogglebox all afternoon when there is paid work to be done, and that I would be catching up on events when I returned home later that evening.

But what was fascinating was that two intelligent and rational people, who had watched exactly the same coverage on TV, came up with two diametrically opposing analyses of Johnson’s performance.

My first caller, who has always believed the Partygate furore was a huge fuss over nothing, was convinced that Johnson had “knocked it out of the park” and had trounced the members of the ‘kangaroo court’ - so much so that they would have little option other than to completely exonerate him.

The Boris sceptic, in contrast, felt that Johnson’s performance was such an unmitigated catastrophe that it definitively marked the end of his political career, and he was clearly lying as he had always lied.

You pay your money and you take your choice. But I retell this anecdote because I believe it gives an interesting insight into today’s polarised political landscape.

The blunt truth is that Johnson’s appearance before MPs this week will have not changed anybody’s mind - probably not even a single person. If you were a keen Johnson admirer before this week, you will remain a fan. If, however, you are an obsessive Johnson hater, your mind will not have been changed. I doubt the political scales shifted by so much as a fraction of an inch.

When I finally managed to watch the coverage, I could understand both points of view. Johnson made a good fist of his defence, as you might expect from a seasoned political operator who has been prepped for this appearance by a small army of lawyers and political advisors for weeks.

He was almost convincing when he avowed that his appearance at leaving dos for Number 10 staffers was necessary for staff morale and therefore essential for work purposes, and they were so convinced they had done nothing wrong that official photographers had been invited along to record the event.

But even as he was speaking I could hear in my mind’s ear many members of the public pointing out that not only were they not allowed to attend work leaving dos, but they couldn’t even visit dying elderly relatives, such were the strictness of the restrictions imposed by Johnson and his government colleagues.

It is worth remembering at this point that the Privileges Committee is not reopening the question of whether the gatherings were within the rules. What is at issue here is whether Johnson “intentionally or recklessly” misled Parliament, and here I thought the former Prime Minister was skating on thin ice.

Bullish briefings from his team before this week’s hearing suggested that senior advisors had assured him that the gatherings were within the rules, and I expected him to come up with names and details. But unless I missed it, they were not forthcoming, and this undermined his defence.

Now we await the committee’s verdict, but such is the relentless sweep of history it may not matter all that much. Under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives have made a modest recovery. The economy is improving, the Budget was generally well received, Sunak’s Northern Ireland deal sailed through the Commons this week, and there have been some small positive signs in the opinion polls.

Whisper it quietly, but perhaps big beast Boris is yesterday’s man?

And let us pause for a moment to drink in the full absurdity of all this. War is raging in Europe, Donald Trump is accused of trying to overthrow democracy with an armed insurrection, and Paris is ablaze over Macron’s pension reforms.

And in the UK? We are obsessed over a forlorn union jack birthday cake that never even left its tupperware box. It is both quintessentially British and completely bonkers.