Is the Prime Minister OK or in need of a reality check?

IF Boris Johnson’s New Year resolution was to appear to have a basic grasp of reality, he failed within just five days.

His answers at the first PMQs of 2022 swung between wildly inaccurate and manifestly untrue. He denied saying fears over inflation were “unfounded” – which he definitely did. He claimed his government had built new nuclear power plants, which it has not.

He claimed Labour wanted to rejoin the EU. Not true. He got his own “warm homes discount” wrong by a factor of 52 and the Speaker had to stop him walking out of the chamber because he’d apparently forgotten he was due to give a statement to MPs about Covid.

No wonder Angela Rayner, standing in for isolating Keir Starmer, asked the PM: “Are you OK?”. A three-word suckerpunch that sent him reeling.