Johnson's hypocrisy and lies are emblematic of the British establishment | Owen Jones

Now the prime minister is a liability, we must resist attempts by his former allies to paint him as an aberration

For several weeks, millions of Britons have said or heard words to the effect of: Surely Boris Johnson can't survive this." And yet he has, batting away Sue Gray's non-report after the Metropolitan police helped gut it, morphing daily into a plummy-mouthed Donald Trump, littering an already mucky political world with lies and entirely bogus smears about Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile. Yet Johnson is now treated by his growing band of critics as a freakish aberration who has disgraced the esteemed office of prime minister. His predecessor, Theresa May, who built her own career on bashing migrants - an approach that culminated in the Windrush scandal - has won plaudits for castigating Johnson in the House of Commons.

But Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it's entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless. When Johnson solemnly lectured the nation to abide by the rules while presiding over illicit parties in his Hacienda-on-Thames, his thought process is not hard to imagine. He must have believed that the rules had to accommodate his needs, rather than vice versa.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist