The Boris Johnson Scandal Playbook

“This latest scandal, over a deputy whip in Parliament accused of sexual misconduct, is just one in a long, wearyingly similar series of self-inflicted troubles to befall Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government,” the New York Times reports.

“Mislead, omit, obfuscate, bluster, deny, deflect, attack — the prime minister’s blueprint for dealing with a crisis, his critics say, almost never begins, and rarely ends, with simply telling the truth. Instead, he tends to start with a denial, move through several interim admissions in which his previous falsehoods are recast as honorable efforts at transparency, and then end with a great show of remorse in which he appears to take responsibility for what happened while suggesting that it was not his fault.”