The main feature of some political controversies is whether or not a Minister has lied. As matters stand, this is not so for Boris Johnson.

That’s because the main aspect of the present dispute is if he should resign because Covid rules about parties were breached in Downing Street.

But whether he has not misled MPs, as well as everyone else, matters at least as much to Conservative MPs as it does to the rest of us – though perhaps for a different reason.

Neither Ministers nor backbenchers expect the Prime Minister to tell all of the truth all of the time. There may be good reasons why he sometimes shouldn’t (if the answer might put national security at risk, for example).

But they do expect him to tell at least some of the truth all of the time – and certainly not to lie directly. If they begin to feel that he isn’t doing so, party discipline begins to break down.

After all, backbenchers must go “over the top”, to use an image frequently deployed among the older intakes, on behalf of their commanding officers, of whom Johnson is the most senior.

If they do and find that those officers have skived off to the mess, or that “somone has blundered”, or that they’ve gone into battle on the basis of false information, they may not rebel, but they may stop turning up.

This brings us to Pen Farthing, his animals, and their transport from Afghanistan. Some leaders will remember that my godson, Raffy Marshall, was the Foreign whistleblower.

My concern this morning is not whether he...

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