Is our MP for Thirsk and Malton right to continue to support Johnson. He has done so throughout the sleaze and corruption, despite the blatant amorality if not immorality evident in many of this government’s démarches. Is this the last straw?

In no normal sincere sense of the word has Johnson apologised: there was no “Sorry for what I did: it was wrong of me. I am sorry for compounding this fault with subsequent lies and attempts to mislead: that also was wrong of me.

That this happened at a time when many of you were suffering because you were doing the right thing makes me realise how badly I have behaved. I am sorry!”

In contrast, Johnson’s “heartfelt apologies” were offered to the “millions and millions of people” who “would not” see that the event “could be said technically to fall within the guidance”. He knows the rage of those who “think (my italics) in Downing Street itself the rules are not being properly followed by people who make the rules.” He concedes that “there were things we simply did not get right and I must take responsibility” – note the “we”. The “I must take responsibility” is a fact, not an apology.

This “apology” asks us to believe that he went into the garden “to thank groups of staff”, believing “implicitly that this was a work event”.

He should have sent those present back inside, he said, when he realised that millions would not see the event as “a work event”. The culpability or bias of the said millions is clearly implied. No explanation, let alone apology is offered for his earlier insistence that Covid guidelines were followed at No 10 at all times. This manufactured gloss on events, this apology for an apology is clearly all we can expect from Johnson, conveniently anxious as he is not to pre-empt Sue Gray’s inquiry into what was, after all, a minor error in failing to read the runes.

Is this what we have to settle for as Prime Minister? The complicity of cabinet and die-hard Johnson supporters in this non-apology and in the events leading up to it would seem to indicate that there is little salvation in sight from any likely replacement.

David Cragg-James, Stonegrave