There is a volcanic quality to Boris Johnson. Practically every part of the British constitution he touches turns to lava. Though still but a few weeks old, historians may well dub his tenure the Magma Premiership, even if it lasts but a little longer.

Though having watched the motions and calibrated the equipoise of the constitution all my professional life – its peculiar mixture of tenacity and fragility – I had not appreciated its swift vulnerability to a head of government fuelled by narcissism and driven by such an excessive sense of personal mission and an ambition so ironclad in its insensitivity. That it is a Conservative and Unionist Prime Minister laying about himself in this way makes it even harder to believe.

This is an experience of political vulcanology the country could well have done without, as the kingdom, its economy, its society and its governing institutions were already under the most severe strain in living memory before the Conservative Party gifted this man to the nation as the Queen’s First Minister.