Give it a week, maybe two, and Boris Johnson will deny he ever came to the JCB factory, owned by Brexit-backing billionaire Lord Bamford, in Staffordshire to make yet another comeback speech. That’s his current grasp of reality. As a politician he has long since been nothing more than a blond curiosity. A one-man freak show. But as a case study he still has plenty to offer the psychiatric profession. The jury is out. Is he aware he is lying but sees no problem with it? In which case he is a borderline sociopath. Or is he utterly delusional? In which case he is clearly psychotic. Either way, he needs help. Quickly. To save him from himself and to save the country from him.

You’d have thought that Boris had had enough of making leadership bids by now. After all, it’s not as if the previous seven or eight have gone particularly well. He is a film franchise dying on his feet. The Return of the Slobbit 9. But apparently not. Boris was back to once again convince the public that the man who had done more than anyone else to divide the country and bring it to its knees was just the person to pull it back from the brink.

Johnson cut to the chase early on. Theresa May’s deal was terrible. What she should have been doing was trying to negotiate with the EU which had been all poised to be flexible and drop the Northern Ireland backstop. It made you wonder if he had actually been following the news over the past couple of years. In BorisWorld, Boris the Superhero would go to Brussels, tell Michel Foreigner what’s what over a decent dejeuner and get exactly what he wanted. He wasn’t saying he ought to be prime minister, but he ought to be prime minister.

Having got Brexit sorted, the Slobbit turned his attention to the reasons why people voted to leave the EU. There was too much inequality. Some people got paid far too much, while others had to make do on next to nothing. Take him as an example. The £230,000 a year he was being paid to write essentially the same article each week – on top of his salary as an MP – was a total disgrace. He should be getting far more than that. No one could survive on £5K a week when they had an expensive divorce to pay for.

Next on the agenda was his record as London mayor. No one had done more to put the capital on the map than him. The cable car that went from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular was the envy of the world. As was his ability to have £48m wasted on a garden bridge project that was never going to get built. Not even some of the world’s greediest or corrupt politicians would have dared to try to get away with that.

Then to the home straight. A succession of lies. Five Easy Pieces. Brexit would lead to a huge cash boost for the NHS. He loved foreigners. He was a team player. He was doing his bit to keep the Tory party together. A no-deal Brexit would be a no-sweat Brexit. There was a brief pause when the Slobbit reached the finish line as the media briefly considered the possibility that they had been had. That the whole thing had been a wind-up and that Boris was going to break into one of his trademark guilty grins and shout “Gotcha”.

But he had been serious. As serious as an unserious man with no credibility can hope to be. So the media piled in. Channel 4’s Michael Crick challenged him on the remarks that he and Michael Gove had made about Turkish immigration during the 2016 referendum campaign. “Never said nothing,” Johnson pouted. Crick quoted chapter and verse but still Boris repeated his denials. Just because there was film and written evidence of him doing something didn’t make it real.

It was straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. Only sadder and more pathetic. More quintessentially British. A man who can’t quite accept that his audience is now limited to his own reflection. In a cracked mirror. And even he can’t raise a laugh at his tired one-liners. No one cares any more. He might have been funny once but the world has moved on. All that remains for him is a howling against the dying of the light.

“Is that it?” he said at the end. It was a question everyone had been asking. He disappeared out of sight behind a large yellow digger. The other diggers in the factory raised their arms in salute. They couldn’t have dug a better hole for him if they had tried.