Not all politicians are the same, I know that, but enough of the current crop are to make many turn away from politics forever. The Johnson debacle, like Trump’s manoeuvrings, is a profoundly anti-democratic moment as both leaders seek to undermine any institution that stops their ambition. That ambition has nothing to do with improving the lives of anyone but themselves. “Power,” says O’Brien as he tortures Winston in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, “is not a means, it is an end.” Indeed.