Boris Johnson is the exact opposite: a pathological liar; a delinquent who derives psychological satisfaction from the slightest deceit; from getting one over on people. And he covers up any exposed mendacity with further fabrications.
He was unanimously found guilty of lying to the Head of State by eleven Supreme Court judges. He was fired from his job as a journalist for a campaign of systematic lies about the EU over a prolonged period and after multiple warnings. He conspired to deceive the nation before the Brexit vote with deliberately misleading financial propaganda, when the Treasury's own forecast for leaving was for significant long-term financial disadvantage. He knowingly lied about the difficulty of getting a Brexit settlement with the EU.
When he started holding daily COVID briefings I began by eagerly tuning in to play the game of 'what lies is he going to spout today', but I quickly found his misrepresentations sickening and farcical.
When it was becoming clear that he had set the tone in Downing Street for dozens of illegal gatherings during lockdown and participated in some himself, he lied and lied and lied to parliament about the existence of the parties, then their nature, and then his presence at them.
He systematically misled us about his knowledge of misconduct claims against Chris Pincher, in a debauched spiral of ever more transparent lies. This culminated in the ridiculous claim that when he appointed Pincher as deputy chief whip, he simply forgot that the man had been found guilty of predatory sexual misconduct while at the Foreign Office.
…
I wrote all that yesterday, and today he is announcing his resignation. The lies have become so ludicrous that the party had no choice but to force him out – there is simply too much buyer’s remorse out there amongst the electorate. More than fifty government ministers and aides had to quit their posts to get rid of him.
But the culture of dishonesty and deception is established. Time and again ministers have appeared in the media repeating Johnson's lies, and there is a worry that the habit of duplicity and distortion has metastasized to the whole party and beyond. I'm not talking about political spin where politicians represent events in the best light to support their position: something we expect from them. I'm talking about the government of the UK spreading deliberate and calculated misinformation to the British public. That is not something we should accept. I disagreed with almost everything Margaret Thatcher did, but I think she honestly believed what she said. I hope we can get back to at least a semblance of integrity. Because an assumption of barefaced lying at the top of government can only go one way, and that is downwards. We have the evidence of what happens in the recent history across the pond. Large numbers of Trump supporters were so immersed in a morass of deceit that they ended up lying to themselves about what was going on, ending in a riotous physical attack on the institution of government.