The hangover Boris Johnson is currently afflicted.

You, like me, may find it difficult to believe that nemesis follows hubris. If only all that Ancient Greek stuff Boris Johnson is always droning on about had hinted at this.

Anyway. The prime minister awoke this morning in a silent bedroom, as seen in a pre-title sequence. Many discarded lateral flow tests are visible in the detritus.

On the bedsheets, we notice something nefarious. (It’s more of a Kendall Roy special than a horse’s head.) We notice a couple of rats slinking out of his hair and think to ourselves, “Christ, if that’s what’s front-facing, the painting in his attic must now be classified as a biological weapon.” The eerie silence is suddenly broken.

Outside, ambulance sirens pierce the air, and multiple phones begin to ring in the bedroom. A baby starts screaming somewhere in the house, and the prime minister’s face remains frozen, as if to say, “What just happened?!!”

Reduce the color to black. “45 DAYS EARLIER…” CAPTION

Boris Johnson, the bubbly British prime minister, was flying back from Cop26 on a private plane on November 2nd, laughing off world-beatingly high Covid transmission rates at a time when light interventions would have reduced them, and nicely set for dinner at the all-male Garrick Club with mid-Mesozoic influencer Charles Moore.

The newspaper columnist who now rules Britain hatched a plan to prevent Owen Paterson, the rule-breaking MP for ultra-safe North Shropshire, from serving a simple 30-day suspension from parliament, ostensibly on the basis that Johnson’s people can do whatever they want.

North Shropshire has swung to the Liberal Democrats with the third-largest swing against the Conservatives since 1945, with Johnson’s people’s many, many rule-breaking Christmas parties turning out to be a radioactive issue on the doorstep. What do you have to say? I strongly advise you to laugh over spilt milk.

Johnson has lost control of the voters who voted to reclaim control, to say nothing of his batshit backbenchers, after failing to pass legislation on the most important topic of his premiership and the age without Labour assistance.

“Get pumped now,” his Downing Street lectern proclaims, but it could just as well read “BEHOLD YOUR WEAKLING KING.” “What we’ve got is two epidemics on top of one other,” the chief medical officer said at a Downing Street meeting this week. And there were two news conferences going on at the same time.

Chris Whitty is in charge of one, while a doppelganger of Richard II, surrounded by useless cronies and unsuccessfully begging parliament for money, is in charge of the other. (Add it to your Shakespeare collection, mate.) Whitty, who has to mix with Boris Johnson, was warned, “Don’t mix with individuals you don’t have to.”