HOW do I hate him? Let me count the ways. It’s possible, I think, that I haven’t disliked a Prime Minister this much since the 1980s. I mean, I usually end up detesting all of them to some degree or other, but Boris Johnson has me muttering under my breath at the mere mention of his name. As soon as I hear his voice, I rush to switch channels or turn the radio off. Only Donald Trump has had that effect on me in recent years.

Not since the Blessed Margaret have I felt this level of visceral distaste for a British Prime Minister. There’s almost something exhilarating about it, if I’m honest. To realise that I can still match the energy of my self-righteous early twentysomething anger. I thought I was past all that. Who knew I still had it in me?

Not that that is much consolation for myself or, I imagine, anyone else for that matter. Some 15 months into this government’s existence and even though it has had to deal with more than its fair share of “events, dear boy” (to quote one of those things another Prime Minister – MacMillan in this case –never actually said), this government is living down to all my expectations.

Indeed, Johnson’s government seems a depressingly accurate reflection of the man himself; shabby, self-serving, authoritarian, incompetent, boastful, casually and unapologetically deceitful, deeply mediocre and utterly nepotistic (not the word I want to use, but maybe the legally safe one).

This week’s utterly illiberal policing bill was followed up by a defence review that saw the government’s alpha male David Brentishness on full display. More Trident missiles! Gunboats to the South China Sea! Let’s pretend Europe doesn’t exist! Phallocentrism as the nation’s foreign policy. (Or is it male insecurity?)

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Meanwhile, a report by the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg, looking back to the beginning of the pandemic at the start of last year, revealed Johnson’s cavalier indifference to the threat it posed. “The best thing would be to ignore it,” he said in a meeting at the end of January 2020.

And even after reports emerged of the impact of the pandemic in northern Italy a month later Boris was still going around ignoring scientific advice and making a big deal of shaking people’s hands. And no, Edwina Currie, that is not the same thing as Princess Diana shaking hands with Aids patients.

Last March, as members of staff in No 10 were beginning to fall ill, he was going around beating his chest (no, really) telling his staff he was “as strong as a bull”. This, of course, was just before he himself caught the virus and ended up in intensive care. Even so, he seems immune to hubris, doesn’t he?

The constant “world-beating” claims, the conflated culture wars, the Irish Sea bridges/tunnels, the sheer smug full-of-himselfness of it all… I can’t bear any of it.

The problem I have now is that my distaste for the man is verging on the irrational. I am just waiting to hear myself come out with “say what you like about Thatcher, but at least …” It’s only a matter of time, I fear.