Boris Johnson's final selfish act tells us everything we need to know about his failed premiership

In the end, the Prime Minister's only consistent aim was to help himself

It is fitting that the final act of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister was to spend a large sum of public money on himself.

The news that Johnson’s government spent £130,000 on an attempt to discredit the Privilege’s Committee investigation into him, is in some ways the perfect end to his premiership.

The government’s justification for this expenditure (that it was “a defence of Johnson’s actions in his capacity as PM”) does not bear even the mildest of scrutiny.

The investigation into whether Johnson misled Parliament, and was therefore in contempt of it, is solely related to his role as an MP. It is totally unrelated to his role as Prime Minister, which in any case he will no longer hold after next week.

That Johnson did mislead Parliament is undeniable. He repeatedly told MPs that there were “no parties” in Downing Street during lockdown and that “all rules were followed.”

When a clip emerged of his former Press Secretary Allegra Stratton joking about the parties, some of which he had attended, he told the Commons that he was “furious” at any suggestion rules had been broken.

Adam Bienkov @AdamBienkov

A reminder of when Boris Johnson said he was "furious" to see footage of staff joking about holding illegal parties in Downing Street. All the while he knew he had attended them himself.

By doing so he misled the House of Commons, not once, but multiple times and he did so while knowing full well what had really gone on inside Downing Street.

After this all became clear, he then failed to correct the record “at the earliest opportunity,” as required of him under Parliamentary rules.

Indeed the case against him is so obvious that it barely needs restating, and yet we are now expected to believe that it is somehow the MPs investigating him, who are the ones who really have questions to answer.

Over recent days both Johnson, and his most shameless supporters in the press, have spent their time desperately trying to claim that, when it comes to this issue, up is somehow down and black is somehow white.

So what is really going on here? Why are they attempting this and how can we really expect the Johnson saga to finally come to an end?