Yes, only our politicians could be brought so low by plastic cups and some tepid pinot grigio

The infamous No 10 garden party is rapidly emerging as an abbreviated version of the 1960s – an orgy of revelry so bacchanalian, if you can remember it, you weren’t there. Even if it was a Bring A Bottle affair, reminiscent of student thrashes.

But today came the first hint that the Prime Minister’s famously fugitive memory may have made a reappearance. Boris had arrived in full sackcloth-and-ashes mode. Subdued demeanour (tick), pained expression (tick) and his normally riotous mop tamed into a (for him) surprisingly kempt and well-brushed coiffure. The Conservative benches thronged; either they’d been whipped to within an inch of their lives, or perhaps, like good Shire Tories, they were simply unable to resist the lure of the bloodsports to follow. Theresa May had sashayed into the Chamber in a dramatic suit of royal blue. If you asked Siri to portray the personification of schadenfreude, it would be the MP for Maidenhead, eyes gleaming above her mask.

What followed was a spectacle that reached new heights of cringe.

“Mr Speaker, I want to apologise,” the PM began in the sonorous tones of a heartrending charity commercial. Unfortunately for him, the heckling from the opposition benches began almost immediately, too. “I know that millions of people across this country have made extraordinary sacrifices over the last 18 months...”

“While you were drinking!” chimed in one Labour member.

“Resign! I think Matt Hancock went!” yelled another, as the PM tried to wrap up his opening salvo.

Boris unerringly chose the passive tense, speaking of “mistakes made” or a “wish that things were done differently”. He seemed to be casting himself as the guiltless hero of a picaresque novel.

His technocratic pleading carried a lawyerly whiff, too. Geography was all-important here. “No 10 is a big department with a garden as an extension of the office,” he’d say, “when I went into that garden just after six on the 20th May 2020 for 25 minutes…” There was something oddly British about this mixture of pathos and pettiness on display. Give the Italians their steamy bunga-bunga parties; the French their secret second families living out of the Élysée Palace. How typical that our politicians are brought low by plastic cups, some tepid pinot grigio pre-bought from the Westminster Tube Tesco and a garden whose identity as a garden is itself a matter of debate. And given the now-familiar trajectory of a Johnson apology, it will surely later emerge that he was there for several hours on multiple occasions, and he’ll have to do another press conference apologising for that, too.

Unfortunately for the PM, Sir Keir Starmer gave a bravura performance today – for once his prosecution lawyer’s demeanour had collided brilliantly with a hitherto-unseen emotion and rage. “Can’t the prime minister see that the British public think he is lying through his teeth?” he snapped. When Boris gets home tonight, he’ll need a stiff drink.