by Boris Johnson

MEDIA commentators are claiming my family life, in which I have a decades-long track record of badly screwing everything up and walking away unconcerned, is somehow relevant to my political ambitions.

They maintain, disgustingly, that just because I have reneged on every promise I have ever made as a private citizen and left those I have lied to alone to face the consequences, my private life is ‘on the table’.

Let me say this: I do not talk about stuff involving loved ones, formerly loved ones, briefly loved ones and ones who I in truth had very little affection for but were on the cycle route between the Daily Telegraph and Parliament.

And even if I and Liam Gallagher have been conducting a good-natured rivalry as to how many love children we can father within the congestion charge area, that is a piffling irrelevance to my career as a public servant.

Any suggestion that I will woo Britain, f*ck Britain and then abandon Britain when it all gets difficult is offensive to me. That is not who I am as a politician, though admittedly it is who I am as a man.

No, to Britain – unlike to Marina, Petsy, Anna, Hels, Emma and whatever the current one is called – I shall remain steadfast and true, no matter what. That is a promise.

Unless I do a year as PM, it’s not going well and America’s making the come-hither eyes at me, in which case good luck with it all and remember me fondly. Thank you.