Woeful that saw ‘the poodle’ sent to the dog house

to Russian air strikes. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so.’

Or a comment in 2013 that said arming anti-Assad Syrian rebels would be ‘pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs’.

For those who have not already guessed, the above statements were all made by Boris Johnson.

Is it any wonder he got short shrift from the G7 meeting, where he abandoned all that and declared: ‘Putin is toxifying Russia by his association with a guy who has poisoned his own people.’

Instead of saying ‘bravo Assad’ and saluting the ‘ruthless clarity’ of Putin’s military support, Johnson demanded sanctions against Syrian and Russian military figures, presumably including those he had told ‘bravo – keep going’ 12 months earlier.

The man once prepared to turn a blind eye to ‘ a monster who barrel- bombs his own people’ was now calling him beyond the pale for using chemical weapons.

Barrel bombs are made up of shrapnel, nuts and bolts, chlorine or fertiliser and cause indiscriminate damage in civilian areas. Syrians blinded or maimed by one may find it hard to distinguish them from a chemical weapon.

Johnson’s woeful week started when he pulled out of a scheduled trip to Moscow following Donald Trump’s missile attack on Syria. He was branded a poodle amid reports that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ordered him t o pull out, fearing Johnson could wreck Tillerson’s own trip to the Kremlin.

In what appeared to be a desperate attempt to save face, Johnson gambled on leading a diplomatic drive at the G7 summit in Italy to win support for anti-Putin sanctions. But from the moment his plane landed, it was clear his plan was never going to take off.

French Foreign Minister JeanMarc Ayrault dismissed sanctions with Gallic contempt, saying it ‘ wasn’t mentioned by anyone, except Boris Johnson’.

And he got only lukewarm backing from the man he was most keen to please: Tillerson.

Johnson had broken the golden rule of diplomatic summits: never propose anything unless it has been stitched up in advance. Wily ex-Washington envoy Sir Christopher Meyer said with lethal understatement: ‘Let’s say Boris got himself out on a limb and the branch was cut off.’

Johnson’s allies say he should be applauded for ‘doing the right thing’. They said countries such as Germany privately sympathised with him but were frightened of upsetting Putin for fear he might cut off their gas pipelines.

Others say he ‘still mourns’ the loss of his long- standing chief adviser Will Walden, effectively sacked by Theresa May’s paranoid aides as the price for making him Foreign Secretary. Better a weaker Team Boris and the occasional international car crash – like this week – than risk him using the Foreign Office to challenge the dear leader was how Johnson’s camp saw No 10’s ploy.

Mrs May’s publi c s upport for Johnson last week was as lukewarm as Tillerson’s. Some of those close to Johnson yesterday tried to explain away the reluctance by some Cabinet Ministers to rally round him, suggesting it was score-settling by Brexit sceptics. One of his biggest Cabinet critics, Philip Hammond – a ‘hard Brexit’ opponent – did back him, though, like Mrs May, with little apparent conviction. Most Tory MPs, however, offered less sympathetic interpretations for Boris’s G7 summit comeuppance.

One theory was that he had a rush of blood to his head after being called a poodle for ducking out of the Moscow visit.

Another is that with little hope of backing from G7 European leaders cross about Brexit, he figured being humiliated was a price worth paying to parade his loyalty to a Trump regime he needs to give Britain a good post-EU trade deal. A third, less

Out on a limb and the branch was cut off Johnson’s cynical tendency to flip-flop

sympathetic, explanation is that i t exposed Johnson’s l ack of statesmanship and cynical tendency to flip-flop.

The same charge of opportunism was levelled at him in the EU referendum when he told friends ‘I’ve never been an Outer’ – right up to the point he took charge of the ‘Out’ campaign.

When Michael Gove knifed Boris in the Tory leadership contest, saying he had decided to stand against his Brexit brother-in-arms on the implausible grounds that he had suddenly realised Johnson was unfit to be PM, many – including me – did not believe him.

Maybe Gove was on to something after all.