Not so long ago one of Boris Johnson’s colleagues, who’d been called in for a chat, concluded their conversation with a lavish expression of admiration for the prime minister. As the door closed behind his departing visitor Johnson glanced up and, using the fingers and thumb of his right hand, made the familiar gesture for something that, before wisely dropping the word from a speech last year, he had been scheduled to call “onanism”.

Flatterers be warned: the laddie’s not for smarming. Johnson has a cold eye. He knows sycophancy when he sees it.

Because he craves approval, I find the anecdote counterintuitive, and the more instructive for that. I called it to mind when reading this week that the prime minister wishes it to