Boris Johnson has only ever made one, incontrovertibly-accurate public statement.

He said the words: "It is an inverted pyramid of piffle." Although he was, at the time, busy lying about an extra-marital affair and abortion he'd declined to pay for, it was a precise and true self-description of a man whose head is fatter than his arse, and who specialises in the manufacture and distribution of nonsense.

Yesterday he held a smoked fish aloft and told the final Tory leadership hustings : "This kipper, which has been presented to me just now by an editor of a national newspaper, who received it from a kipper smoker in the Isle of Man, who is utterly furious, because after decades of sending kippers like this through the post, he has had his costs massively increased by Brussels bureaucrats who have insisted that each kipper must be accompanied by this, a plastic ice pillow. Pointless, expensive, environmentally damaging, ‘elf and safety, ladies and gentlemen."

The Isle of Man is not in the EU. The EU does not regulate the temperature of smoked fish. It was Whitehall that made the rules in question. And whether he intends to Brexit with or without a deal, any future trading agreement with the EU would mean we have to follow its regulations on food imports, anyway.

You may wish to criticise the newspaper editor for getting it so absurdly wrong, or perhaps Johnson for repeating it. But perhaps you'd like to note that a study of 3m Twitter users over 11 years by researchers at MIT found fake news travels 6 times further, and faster, than the truth.

The lies were more likely to spread when they caused shock or disgust. Not only did the smoker believe a lie, not only did the editor not check it, and not only did lazy, winging-it, gimme-a-prop-and-I'll-wave-it Boris propagate it, not only does our next PM appear to be risibly suggestible, but an audience of people who have given him their attention for 20 years gave him a standing ovation for it.

Be shocked, and disgusted, at that.

But the kipper, my friends, is the very least of it.

In 1999 he promised his boss he wouldn't stand as an MP. He then stood as an MP.

In 2004 he promised his boss he hadn't lied. He was then found to have lied, and was fired from the shadow cabinet.

In 2001 he said the UK should stay in the EU because it had "brought palpable benefits to Britain in free trade and bestowing British citizens the rights of free movement and free establishment in the EU, and withdrawal would mean a potentially worrying loss of influence".

In 2018 he said staying in the single market was "mad". In 2016 he said he was in favour of it, in 2012 he said he wanted to stay in it, and during the referendum his Vote Leave campaign literature claimed: "Britain will have access to the single market after we vote leave."

He is currently engaged in promising to leave it , overnight, despite the fact 66% of Brexit voters thought we wouldn't, and it is according to his own views "mad".

in 2003 he told the House of Commons: "I am a bit of a fan of the European Union. If we did not have one, we would invent something like it."

In the same speech , about a bill allowing EU expansion, he said: "About time too." He went on to add Turkey should be encouraged to join the EU, as its coast was the location for the Greek myth of the rape of the princess Europa. And he offered to campaign in a referendum on the issue – alongside the Liberal Democrats.

In March 2016 he said: "You cannot express the sovereignty of Parliament and accept the 1972 European Communities Act."

Two weeks ago, he said stopping Parliament exerting control was "an essential tool" that it would be "absolute folly" to rule out.

In 2016 he promised his boss he would campaign to Remain, and then campaigned to Leave. He drove around in a bus claiming the EU cost £350m a week when it was actually £171m . He fabricated quotes from his own godfather, made up stories about bendy bananas and British sausages, and criticised the EU gravy train which paid his school fees.

He promised residents of Uxbridge he'd oppose a third runway at Heathrow, then spent £20,000 of taxpayer cash avoiding a vote on the issue. He promised Theresa May he'd support her Brexit deal, then resigned, voted for it, then against it.

He promised a friend he'd get the address of a journalist so he could be beaten up, and didn't. He promised his wives he'd be faithful, and wasn't, repeatedly. He said Muslim women in burqas looked like letterboxes, when burqas are never red and letterboxes rarely perambulate. From lip service to back-covering by way of deceit and mendaciousness all the way to silly and bonkers, he has never promised a thing which he later delivered.

Today, clowns are complaining at being compared to him. Within a month of his taking up residence in Downing Street, you may expect Donald Trump to do the same.

So it's just as well he'll be due a general election before Christmas, and the good voters of Britain – a Remain country for the past 2 years – and do the same as the good voters of Uxbridge – which is now a Remain constituency – and kick this piffling prat out of power.

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