WHAT single word would you say best describes Boris Johnson? Dishevelled, perhaps? Self-serving, unprincipled, arrogant: there’s so much choice. But this week, his behaviour has been one thing above all: shameful.

Once again, he blustered his way through Prime Minister’s Questions in an unseemly scramble for credibility. Once again, it eluded him.

“Nobody defends booing of the England side,” he exclaimed, all flustered. This just after Keir Starmer had read out quotes showing how he and his home secretary had effectively defended the booing of the England side.

We all know the deplorable story by now. Johnson and Priti Patel pointedly refused to condemn England fans for jeering at players who take the knee, Johnson’s spokesperson saying the Prime Minister “fully respected” fans’ right to boo and slighting the players for their “gesture”; three black players bravely took penalties in the Euros final and missed; vicious abuse from a nasty coterie of racists followed in a torrent.

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What did anyone expect? Johnson and his ministers had “stoked the fire”, as England player Tyrone Mings pointed out, along with Tory baroness Sayeeda Warsi and countless others.

Deep down somewhere he rarely cares to look, Boris Johnson surely knows this is true. Worse, it was a calculated decision to hold back from criticising those booing fans, because they are his base and he’s been cultivating them for years.

But as always, he has tried to evade all responsibility.

He did the same thing when abuse of Muslim women increased after he called those who wore the face veil “letterboxes” – another dog whistle to bigots. Of course I didn’t mean to cause offence, he opined afterwards.

And since sectarian tensions have erupted in Northern Ireland as a result of the protocol he signed, he and his government have tried to push blame onto the EU and Theresa May. And when the number of Covid-related deaths rose to 100,000 after the government had resisted basic measures like closing borders and putting off lockdowns, he lied that his government “did everything we could”.

Time and again, he behaves as if nothing he ever says or does should be held against him.

“I want to reiterate our support, my support, our total support, for our England team,” he blustered on Wednesday. It was excruciating. He is a shapeshifter. And we’re stuck with him.

Next week, it will be two years since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. Other Prime Ministers have been flawed. Margaret Thatcher was narrowly ideological; Blair had a fateful messianic streak. But Boris Johnson is the only Prime Minister in living memory to have been so manifestly unfit for the job from the start. I don’t intend to rehearse yet again his long record of dishonesty and irresponsibility, but consider his record in office.

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What are his achievements? The vaccine programme? Yes. Brexit? Only if judged narrowly on fulfilling his manifesto pledge to leave the EU, as withered international credibility, battered trade, damaged businesses and a more unstable Northern Ireland can hardly be seen as achievements. Do winning the 2019 election and the Hartlepool by-election count as successes? Only if you’re a Conservative.

But the list of cock-ups, u-turns, acts of dishonesty and bad decisions goes on and on.

It begins immediately after he became Prime Minister. His ministers lied about internal government research showing the dire consequences of a no-deal Brexit, which he blithely referred to as “bumps in the road”. He unlawfully shut down parliament to try and stop attempts by MPs to avert a catastrophic no-deal, only to be slapped down by the Supreme Court, and along with his ministers, stoked savage public anger with politicians who opposed him.

He promised that an “oven ready” Brexit deal would quickly be signed and that there would be no trade border down the Irish Sea, only to take a year to negotiate a deal which created a trade border down the Irish Sea.

He hailed that deal as a success, then a few months later pledged to break international law by going back on it, because, lo and behold, it wasn’t actually a success. It was damaging to the integrity of the United Kingdom – something that he’d been repeatedly warned about. His government’s willingness to break a treaty obligation caused widespread shock and brought international criticism, including from Joe Biden. Britain’s global reputation slid further.

When the pandemic loomed, he was too late to lock down and failed to act quickly to require that travellers quarantine, leading to more infections being seeded.

Then there have been the endless u-turns, on mandatory face masks, free school meals during holidays (twice), a health surcharge on NHS workers from overseas, Huawei, exam results, the extension of furlough and most recently on England's so-called “Freedom Day”.

They illustrate all too clearly the poor judgment and lack of direction at the top of government.

And in Scotland? Not since Thatcher has there been a British Prime Minister who is so poorly attuned to Scottish politics. Johnson has no feel for Scotland that is discernible.

His comment to fellow Tory MPs that devolution was “Tony Blair’s greatest mistake” betrayed hostility to Holyrood and a hankering for control.

His government’s “muscular unionism”, insisting on spending cash in areas of devolved competence, planting union flags on buildings and instructing diplomats to talk about Britain as one nation instead of four, is head-in-hands stuff. It’s what has been called “know-your-place unionism”. The instinct to edit out Scotland’s separate identity within the UK can do nothing but annoy key centre ground voters north of the border.

Meanwhile his ineptitude and lack of principle has allowed Nicola Sturgeon to dazzle by comparison.

Sturgeon’s pandemic decision-making may in practice be little different from Johnson’s, aside from a more cautious approach to lifting restrictions, as Scotland’s care home death rate starkly underlines. But she has public trust.

She is widely viewed as someone serious who has people’s interests at heart. Johnson by contrast seems intent on serving himself first, his party second and the rest of us – particularly outside of England – as a distant third.

It’s clear that Boris Johnson is exactly the sort of Prime Minister he was expected to be, and we are all paying the price.

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