The National:

LET'S be scrupulously fair here – it’s unlikely, short of bullying her into an elective caesarean, that the PM pressured his missus into producing a daughter as a useful distraction.

And, in the event, nobody seems to have much noticed. Not like a Royal sprog where the media behave like a scrum when someone crashes a lorryload of used tenners.

Yet it’s not unreasonable to suppose Boris Johnson was scrabbling around for something – anything – to take the great British public’s mind off the fact that he’d been caught, yet again, being economical with the actualite.

It’s passing strange to this observer that so many of the Tory troops seemed a bit slow on the uptake with this one. It’s not as if Boris was ever likely to be confused with someone wedded to the truth. Or even on semi-intimate terbems with it.

I mean how long does it take a reasonably sentient being to figure out that Number Ten man is a serial liar and bone idle with it?

Oh what a tangled web he wove when he reached for his default tactic of choice as the world learned that whilst they forewent their turkey with granny, Downing Street had turned into party central. To wit: just brazen it out, and the media storm will die down as it always does. This time, however, Harry Houdini was having the devil of a job shaking off the sceptics. I mean when someone like Douglas Ross is lost for anything resembling words of praise for the boss, the latter knows he’s in serious soapy bubble.

The National: Douglas Ross's Scottish Tory party has been making claims on social media which have been called 'blatant falsehoods'

Nevertheless, finding himself in a rather deep hole, your man seemed incapable of stopping the dig.

Enter stage right the cavalry in the shape of the Cabinet Secretary, a man who owed his very job to BJ and was previously his permanent secretary. A chap who knows where most of the bodies are buried, and presumably how to prevent them being unnecessarily exhumed.

Whatever verdict Mr Simon Case returns, he will have served an incomparably useful get-out clause for all Johnson’s cabinet secretaries and ministers. No longer did they have to dodge the media round for fear of perjuring themselves.

“Party? What Party? News to me Guv.” Instead, they could rely on the time-honoured body swerve of it being impossible to comment on anything much at all until the Cabinet Secretary has completed his rigorous investigation.

Now you might think it on the risible side of odd to subcontract this business at all. Who amongst us requires to ask someone else whether or not someone threw a party in our own house? In a bit of our house which we apparently require to walk through to get to our love nest.

Meanwhile, the PM has another card up the sleeve. A broadcast to the nation. A broadcast to advise the nation that there was a new and dodgier Covid variant on the rampage. Thing is, this was hardly a news flash to anyone not hiding in their local cave.

By the time the tousled one was reading off his autocue – to avoid a detour round Peppa Pig World nae doubt – the world and its neighbour had already spent the previous 24 hours worrying and wondering which of their festive plans would have to be binned, and how to get their boosters.

Still, better late than never, Boris. Nobody could accuse you of precipitate action when the Covid first hit us. Since when just short of 150,000 folks have died. So better by far to get ahead of the new curve. Especially if it takes minds off the fact you’re a bit of a chancer.