Mrs Maybe has finally agreed to let go of the doorframe at Number 10 and tearfully promises to be gone by the end of June. That leaves Boris Johnson mugging the headlines this morning, not an encouraging start to the day.

“Boris shows his hand,” is the Daily Mail’s take on this ineluctable turn of events.

The thing is, Johnson has never stopped showing his hand. Up it goes at all opportunities in a “me! me! me!” display of entitled egotism, another posh boy wanting to sit at the head of the table. There has long been an “anyone-but-Boris” movement in the Tory Party – second only, for some of us, to the “anyone-but-any-of-that-shower” movement.

The best quote about Johnson you will ever need came from his fellow London Tory Steve Norris – “Everybody likes him except the people who know him.”

I came across those wise words in in the Observer, where columnist Nick Cohen praised such a succinct verdict. Interestingly, the original quote is less pithy. It comes from a tweet last month by Norris, a former transport minister. Below is the full version…

“OK, cards on the table. Johnson is the only MP who if elected PM would cause me to leave the Tory party. Everybody likes him except the people who know him. Total chancer who doesn’t read his papers. Cynical & self-indulgent.”

While the shorter version has the merit of brevity, the full quote gets closer to the man. We are, as Cohen argued in his column, far too indulgent towards politicians who are ‘characters’ – Johnson, Farage, Rees-Mogg and – over the water – Trump.

And those characters are too often allowed to hide behind their self-crafted public personas: Boris the charming bumbler, Nigel the ordinary man down the pub, Jacob the – what exactly? (Lord Snooty crossed with a rural solicitor crossed with a fancy-dress fascist???).

The broadcaster Eddie Mair, in his days at the PM on BBC Radio 4, once did a splendid filleting of Johnson, during which he repeatedly said what should become a mantra of the moment – “You’re a nasty piece of work.”

It was a gratifying moment, as too has been the sight recently of journalists flinging awkward questions at Nigel Farage – another chancer who hides behind self-made myths (such as the one about coming “out of semi-retirement”  to save Brexit – oh, pull the other one, it’s got bollocks on: you’ve never been away).

Channel 4 News has investigated Farage’s funding (always a mystery, aside from his Euro-stipend) and alleges that the millionaire insurance tycoon Aaron Banks spent nearly half a million pounds shoring up Farage’s lavish lifestyle in 2016 after he stood down as UKIP leader.

Good work, Channel 4 – and we need more of that.

All the Tory candidates need proper scrutiny, but especially Boris Johnson, with his faux-matiness, his character flaws and, worst of all, that dreaded charisma – a quality much praised by his fans.

Oh, get away with you: charisma in a politician is a dangerous thing, although come to think of it, so too is a complete lack of it, as shown by the havoc wreaked by the charisma vacuum that is Theresa May.

Incidentally, Labour play a gentler version of the character game, with Jeremy Corbyn wheeled before us as “Jeremy”, a friendly, vaguely avuncular character you might like to have a chat with down the allotment.

Thanks to the way matters are rolled out in this country, the decision on who will be the next prime minister lies partly with a tiny clutch of crusty Tory members – or what Kevin Maguire in the New Statesman neatly calls a “120,000-weak sect”.

Can any person still in full possession of their marbles think that allowing Boris Johnson to be prime minister is a sensible notion? I do hope those 120,000 Tory crusts have their wits about them.