The best brands are instantly recognisable from a fragment — the curves of a Coca-Cola bottle or the shape of a piece of Lego immediately evoke particular products. Boris Johnson is just such a brand. The former foreign secretary is the only British politician who can be identified by his first name or his hair.

His image may look chaotic but it is a calculated performance. Each apparently shambolic shuffle, or faux-embarrassed ruffle of the unruly mop, is designed to hone an impression of the Old Etonian classicist as a “man of the people”. Every humiliation or embarrassment is harnessed to reinforce his reputation as an outsider who does not have to play by the rules. Only “the artist formerly known as Boris” could turn