What does Boris Johnson represent? I don’t mean his politics; we know about them: Johnson is an unprincipled opportunist who will sling any mud or blow any smoke if he thinks it will get him higher up the pole.

In the early 2000s, as the Tories went rightward, Johnson wrote columns calling gay men “tank-topped bumboys” and describing repealing Section 28 “Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools.” As London mayor, the same man posed as some kind of metropolitan liberal and came out in favor of same-sex marriage.

Once Brexit drove the Tories back rightward, Johnson turned up the reactionary knob again, calling Muslim women who wear burqas “letter boxes.”