Boris Johnson marks his second anniversary in Number 10

IT FEELS SURPRISING that July 24th marks only the second anniversary of Boris Johnson’s arrival at Number 10, the prime-ministerial residence: into those two years he has packed enough incident to keep another man going for two decades. He has divorced for a second time, married for a third, witnessed the birth of what is thought to be his sixth child, contracted covid-19 and flirted with the Grim Reaper. On the politics front he has prorogued Parliament, expelled 21 Tory grandees from the party for voting against the government on Brexit, lost his majority in the process, won spectacular re-election and signed a Brexit deal.

What to make of this whirling dervish? Mr Johnson is notoriously a “Marmite” politician: fans forgive him anything; enemies regard him as a dangerous buffoon. The latter group now includes his former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, who this week told the BBC that the very idea of Mr Johnson being prime minister “obviously is ludicrous”. He is also an alpha/gamma politician, to invoke the pompous marking scheme of his former alma mater, Oxford University, sometimes dazzling with political genius and at others appalling with incompetence. The question is which will predominate during the rest of his time in office.

Mr Johnson understood intuitively that the financial crisis of 2008 ended the...