No one should have been surprised to see Boris Johnson in an ebullient mood in the Commons, two days after taking the kind of public beating that would finish off anyone with so much as a nanogram of shame.

It told us what we already knew, that Johnson will carry on living in Boris Johnson World until the very last. He is the captain of his own ship of make-believe, and he will go down with it, jabbering and generally making it all up, even as the waves of truth close over above him.