Boris Johnson was elected on a strategy that went down well with members, but was inevitably going to collide with reality and unravel. And it’s happened more quickly than it might have done, for reasons for which he and his team are responsible.

Rather than recognising the challenges of a fast-changing society require sometimes complex responses, that we live in a world of trade-offs, that easy answers are usually false answers, we have seen the rise of the simplifiers.

A willingness by politicians to say what they think the public want to hear, and a willingness by large parts of the public to believe what they are told by populist politicians, has led to a deterioration in our public discourse.

David Gauke Quotes