How did the man with no self-control swallow the words 'Barnard Castle'?

How did he do it? How, in the name of everything he takes unseriously, did Boris Johnson announce that up to 60m doses of the Novavax vaccine will be bottled and finished by GlaxoSmithKline, but somehow stop himself looking straight down the camera to add: “And they’ll do it at their plant in … [Roger Moore-style eyebrow raise] … Barnard Castle”? There are few scarcer commodities than Johnsonian self-control, but having overcome that particular urge, the prime minister now surely has no personal restraint left for the rest of the year. Lock up your infosec entrepreneurs, parents.

And so to Johnson’s first outing in his government’s new briefing room, which I’m afraid is absolutely gopping. Not only was the previous wood-panelled location far smarter, but the party of business seems to have been completely rinsed for their £2.6m. It looks like it cost about what a leading public school would spend on the set for a sixth-form play about a man who becomes prime minister. Which I suppose is what we’re watching.

The podium Johnson took last night will most frequently be the domain of his press secretary, Allegra Stratton, whose televised briefings apparently begin in May. Yesterday, she could still be found backstage in Downing Street, batting away the implications of the latest revelation of his four-year affair with Jennifer Arcuri. (Has any story ever been sensationally “revealed” more frequently? I feel even more up to speed on this particular background than I do on what happened to Batman’s parents.)

“He does believe in the wider principles of integrity and honesty,” ran Stratton’s official verdict on Boris Johnson, one of the leading liars of the age. “He acts with integrity and is honest.” To which the most seemly reply is: LOLOLOLOLOL. Or as his press secretary preferred it yesterday: “Of course the prime minister follows the Nolan principles when conducting himself in public life.” OK but which Nolan – Christopher? I guess there are thematic consistencies between the prime minister and the movie director’s oeuvre. Both would very much like you to believe there’s no such thing as objective truth, and that after a while, the audience will simply lack the energy to understand or argue with what they’re watching.

Perhaps that’s what has happened during the pandemic. It is impossible to read Failures of State, the frequently jaw-dropping book by Sunday Times journalists Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott, and not conclude that the British people deserved far, far better from the government. Yet its deeply healthy approval ratings suggest that people didn’t think they did. That is a tragedy in its own way, though not for the Johnson administration. It is, of course, hugely encouraging news for a cabinet of this calibre that people expect to be governed badly – indeed, are taken to approve of it.

And for all my genuine relief and delight at being able to do things taken for granted for the entire rest of my life, I honestly couldn’t be more bored with hearing, from Johnson, that he’s done his best. And? I should hope you have done your best, prime minister. What do you want – a participation medal?

Having had to live with the calamitously bullish version of Johnson for most of the pandemic, we’re now stuck with this equally needy data shagger. I imagine it’s rather similar to being Johnson’s partner over the period of an infidelity, followed by its discovery and aftermath. You think nothing could be worse than the cavalier, exuberant, secretive Johnson – until you’re stuck at home with the dreary, careful, performatively penitent Johnson, forever inviting you to check his phone just to be sure.

Cameron refuses even to take calls on this, needless to say, while Johnson himself was not even asked yesterday about the implications of Arcuri’s revelations. But then, public life isn’t what it was. Nobody at the top seems to see it as anything much more than a game to which any number of moral failings have been “priced in”. Nobody resigns any more, nobody says sorry any more, and nobody really needs to take anyone’s calls any more. You can see why people have learned not to expect better. It saves time.

* Author, Guardian columnist.