In a series of events that belong in a slapstick comedy, the bumbling former mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has become our prime minister. Widely seen as an endearing eccentric, Johnson has carefully shaped his image with the media. Who could forget how he responded to the controversy that ensued when he called Muslim women “letter boxes” and “bank robbers”? Immediately afterwards he turned up on television wearing Hawaiian shorts and offering journalists tea from whimsically mismatched mugs instead of answers or an apology.

Johnson is an alumnus of both Eton and Oxford, and once belonged to the notorious all-male society “The Bullingdon Club” — the initiation ceremony for which included burning a £50 note in front of a homeless person. But that won’t stop his media friends recasting him as a man of the people in the coming weeks. Over five million people in the United Kingdom are currently struggling to make ends meet as a result of low-paid, insecure employment, coupled with steadily rising costs of living. And the best the Tories can give them is a toff promising tax cuts for the rich.

A careerist whose hypocrisy knows few bounds, it can be easy to forget today’s Brexiteer hero once said that the only benefit of leaving the European Union would be that it would make us “recognise that most of our problems are not caused by Brussels, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification, and under-investment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure.”