Who’s really leading Britain – Boris Johnson or the crazy-face emoji? | Marina Hyde

Seemingly, no one at a potential 100-person boozy lockdown gathering was able to predict it would upset the general public

As a lot of people in Boris Johnson's life have discovered, there is a point where he has simply broken too many things for the relationship to be put functionally back together again. Is he at that point with the British public, or even with the Conservative party?

Many are getting a really addled whiff of Humpty Dumpty off the latest revelations, that the prime minister himself attended a mass gathering" in the Downing Street garden during the first lockdown. This May 2020 BYOB drinks party, to which more than 100 people were invited, kicked off a mere 55 minutes after that day's designated cabinet minister had given a national press conference insisting that people in England could only meet one person from another household outdoors, so ... what was the party theme? Let them eat cheese and wine? Come as the last scene in Animal Farm?

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist