Putin is up to no good. But Johnson needs little help in creating chaos | Nick Cohen

The gobocracy' that surrounds the PM is capable of doing Russia's work for it

As Boris Johnson is leading Britain's first government of pundits, a gobocracy", if you like, it is worth repeating Humbert Wolfe's scathing poem on the press: You cannot hope to bribe or twist,/ thank God! the British journalist./ But, seeing what the man will do/ unbribed, there's no occasion to."

In a gobocracy, there's no need to become too conspiratorial about why a prime minister betrays his country. Put a Telegraph columnist in charge, throw in Michael Gove from the Times and Dominic Cummings from Vote Leave's propaganda arm, and their bottomless cynicism and instinctive charlatanism will bring ruin with or without foreign assistance.