Can't we just draw a white line around it?

With his impending cross-examination by Sue Gray, Boris must be rattled. He is bringing in the master of the punchy-three-word slogans, Australian strategist Isaac Levido, who (along with Cummings) supported Mr Johnson's 2019 election victory.

Mr Johnson has come up with the titles for his salvage campaign, evoking Big Dog and Red Meat metaphors to save himself, but mainly illustrating that his ego is bigger than his haircut. 

We've seen it before in modern times; that the Eton boys are still boys and treating the UK as a bauble to collect in some secretive Bullingdon game. Boris is a washed-up hack with an egotistical sense of self-preservation and a wish to cling to power. Now he's paying (I use the word loosely) for the witch-doctors to drum up his rescue.

He's already started, mounting an attack on the Civil Service by implying a pervasive drinking culture.  

Then to the BBC, which doesn't support the UK's soft power, instead it speaks an inconvenient line which implicitly is damning to his performance.  Or so he says.

Time, maybe, to sack a few people? Major Civil Servants. Maybe a chief of staff and/or a Principal Private Secretary? 

Sue Gray might be able to cut through this, but the size of the task keeps expanding. Instead of reductio ad absurdum, we get crescente ad absurditatem - growing to absurdity. Although I doubt whether it is as easy to kick into the long grass.

Johnson won't be able to stay away from the military either, probably bringing in the Navy on migration duty and making a speech in a Naval dockyard somewhere.

Then there will be the North, well beyond Hatfield, where he will need to come up with some gimmicks, so long as they don't appear too expensive to his comfortable south.

Not forgetting his credit piracy on all things COVID related.

I know this commentary sounds jaded, but unless Johnson gets his condition under control, the line he draws will still be as bleak.

• There's the Missing Inaction of the Levelling Up White Paper.
• Energy price hikes with their predicted hardships
• Unusually high inflation at up to 6-9%
• The National Insurance £12billion addition to the tax burden.
• The greater hidden consequences from Brexit.
• Chumocracy handouts to combat COVID
• Partying so much the place needs redecorating.

But Johnson's amnesiac mind and talent for misdirection toward his blue chums can ensure a big fat white line is drawn with all of it behind him.

Or should that be big fat white lie?