Boris Johnson’s indecision at the start of the Covid pandemic cost at least 23,000 lives, according to analysis this week by the Covid Inquiry.

That is tens of thousands of families who were thrown into grief, pain and in some cases poverty, thanks to the elevation to power of a man who we now know was congenitally unsuited to the job.

Of course the fact that Johnson was unsuitable for high office was always obvious to anyone willing to see it.

For ten years I closely covered his rise to power, detailing his record of cronyism at London’s City Hall and the dishonesty, hypocrisy and selfishness that later went on to define him.

Yet despite it being clear for at least a decade before he entered Downing Street what kind of politician he really was, there were powerful vested interests who were determined never to let it be more widely known.

Faced with declining poll ratings and the possibility of a tax-raising Corbyn premiership, the Conservative party establishment turned to the one man most of those who had ever worked with him knew couldn’t even be trusted to run a tap.

A similar process took place within the British media, where publications that had previously sacked Johnson as a journalist for his dishonesty and incompetence, suddenly started pretending that the best thing for the country was to vote to put him into Number 10.

The exact same confidence trick is now being attempted with Nigel Farage.