Tories on their knees – and here comes Boris Johnson. Dear reader, look away | Marina Hyde

Who would think a lying, hypocritical degenerate was the answer to this crisis? A large number of Conservatives, apparently

If you feel physically breathless at the current state of British politics, that's just Boris Johnson immediately sucking all of the oxygen out of the room again. Is the dignity vampire coming back? Unclear. But I know we're all big fans of lettuces now, so be advised there could be a monstrous 16-stone slug waiting to crawl out of this one and burrow straight into your brain stem.

With a poll this morning putting them just the 39 points behind Labour, a genuinely tragic number of Conservative betas seem to think that only Johnson can fix this/save their jobs. They desperately, desperately need you to think of the UK government as a state-of-the-art technology that only functions when unlocked with Boris Johnson's unique biometric pass. And yet, does it? Does it operate only when Johnson's eyes meet its retinal scan? Does it crave to recognise his handprint (like so many spirited but troubled young women before it)? On the vanishingly outside chance that this is the case, can we not simply do as the movies have taught us: forcibly borrow or cut off the relevant Johnson body part, and just get things working that way?