Johnson delivers 20-minute barrage of mansplaining and manspreading

After being subjected to a 20-minute audio-visual barrage of near constant mansplaining and manspreading, Sky’s Sophy Ridge finally got to ask a question without being talked over or interrupted. A month ago, she had asked Boris Johnson to name the naughtiest thing he had ever done. Back then, the prime minister had asked for more time to think about it as he was so spoiled for choice. So now he had a chance to review his previous, perhaps he would like to come clean?

Boris smirked, tugged nervously at his pre-tousled hair and spread his thighs even wider apart. Both knees were now only visible in a wide-angle shot. “Um ... er …” he babbled incoherently, playing for time that he didn’t have. In desperation, he turned around and begged his off-camera advisers to help him out. They all tried to avoid catching his eye. Where to start? Finally inspiration came to him. There may have been one or two occasions on which he had ridden his bicycle on the pavement. Something he deeply regretted and would be punishable with a whole life sentence under a new Conservative law and order crackdown.

“Cycling on a pavement?” a startled Ridge repeated. Did the prime minister really think that was a more serious offence than conspiring to get a journalist beaten up? Or getting Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe a longer sentence in an Iranian jail? Or being sacked for making up stories as a journalist?

Or being sacked as a minister for lying to his party leader about his affair with Petronella Wyatt? Or lying to the Queen? Or wilfully inflicting a Brexit deal on the country in which even he didn’t believe? Or refusing to take responsibility for numerous affairs and children? Or using racist and sexist language? Or misconduct in public office with Jennifer Arcuri?

And as these were just the misdemeanours that were a matter of public record, presumably he was more than happy to admit to them all. Clearly nothing in there to give a normally functioning lying sociopath a sleepless night. But who knew what else Boris might have tucked away in his back catalogue? The dodgy demos? The Dominic Raab basement tapes?

Related: Lying liar lies some more as Boris Johnson braves BBC studio for debate | John Crace

Up till then it had been a standard interview for the prime minister. One in which his narcissism had been so out of control he had barely appeared to notice there was an interviewer in the same room as him. Sophy who? Give it half an hour and he wouldn’t even be able to remember her name.

Under the first-past-the-post voting system, tactical voting is when you vote for a party that you would not normally support in order to stop another party from winning. For example, in a constituency where the result is usually tight between a party you dislike and a party you somewhat dislike, and the party you support usually comes a distant third and has no chance of winning, you might choose to lend your vote to the party you somewhat dislike. This avoids ‘“wasting” your vote on a party that cannot win the seat, and boosting the chances that the party you dislike most will lose.

Ridge looked genuinely troubled at times. Not just by the fact that she and her viewers had yet again been gaslit by someone so clearly incapable of either empathy or talking in coherent sentences, but also by the probability that he would still be prime minister in four days’ time. How was it possible a country could so fall from grace that it could elect as leader a man who would brazenly tell the lies everyone else was too ashamed to say out loud?

How can we trust you, Ridge asked. Even before she had finished talking, Boris began on his routine patter. We could trust him precisely because everyone knew he was pathologically untrustworthy. Someone whose whole life had been a case study in betrayal. Of himself and others. The UK knew where it stood with him. He was the hollow man who would say whatever was needed to get him through the moment, even if he found himself contradicting himself 30 seconds later. A bloated, degraded figure without qualities on whom anyone was free to superimpose their own hopes and prejudices.

We went through all the usual suspects. The 50,000 nurses that weren’t 50,000. The 20,000 extra police that would leave things just a bit more crap than they were in 2010. Steve Barclay and all trade experts were idiots who didn’t understand the first thing about the Northern Irishborder. He had never been hostile to immigrants. It hadn’t been him who had threatened the arrival of 5 million Turks during the referendum campaign. And so on and so on. It gets so tiring pointing out the same lies, day after day. But if you don’t they eventually get accepted as truths.

“We’re running out of time,” said Ridge mercifully, as Boris continued to riff over her trying not to answer if he would resign if he didn’t win a majority. Though he was disappointed not to have an opportunity to expand on his Sunday Times exclusive that once we had left the EU in January, the UK would have the biggest shag fest ever.

This was the real Brexit dividend. A campaign that had always been close to his heart, and one that he would be proud to spearhead. He would lead the Great Impregnathon. He was even hoping some of it might be televised. O brave new world, that has such people in’t!

John Crace’s new book, Decline and Fail: Read in Case of Political Apocalypse, is published by Guardian Faber. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.