Boris Johnson’s low moral standards are a warning to Keir Starmer

Boris Johnson’s book contains a lot of diverting but formulaic phrases and very little that is new or persuasive in defence of his record as prime minister. Greta Thunberg, for example, is described as “a whey-faced Joan of Arc”. Dominic Cummings is “a homicidal robot”. He makes fun of Emmanuel Macron’s accent: “Is zat your deurg?”

But Unleashed does little to dislodge the impression of his time in No 10 as a period of confused and incompetent administration characterised by low standards in the conduct of public life.

There were exceptions. The drive to develop and deploy Covid vaccines, led by Kate Bingham, was a triumphant success. Mr Johnson’s early and unequivocal support for the Ukrainian people in their resistance against Vladimir Putin’s aggression was admirable.

Most of Mr Johnson’s premiership, however, stands as a warning to his successors. His grasping materialism, accompanied by a low off-the-record whine about not having enough money – and combined with an instinctive reluctance to be straight with people – ensured that his fall from grace was swift.

His wallpaper, his questionable holidays, his appointment to the BBC chair of someone who helped arrange a personal loan – Mr Johnson’s standing with the voters was already corroding before lockdown parties in Downing Street started to be reported.

Sir Keir Starmer seems to have become aware, rather belatedly, of the danger of being sucked down a similar downward spiral. The new prime minister has already sustained serious damage to his reputation by accepting – and failing initially to declare in full – donations of clothes, glasses and entertainment. He has now chosen to make matters worse in the short term, by paying back £6,000 of these donations, in the hope of drawing a line across the page and starting afresh.

This decision is a welcome one, because it is right to pay back at least some of the money and it is better to do it promptly rather than to be dragged into it after months if not years, as in Mr Johnson’s case, when he finally paid for the redecoration of the Downing Street flat himself.

Sir Keir at least gives the impression of someone who made a mistake, through naivety or inexperience, and wants to put it right. He seems to be authentic in that, whereas Mr Johnson’s authentic characteristics were bluster, denial and sulking.

The problem for the current prime minister is that he has invented a distinction that cannot be sustained. He has paid back £6,000 of gifts received in government, but has kept thousands of pounds received before the election. Why it is all right to accept gifts in opposition but not in government was a question that Sarah Jones, the unfortunate junior minister sent out to defend Sir Keir on Thursday, found rather difficult to answer. The honest answer might be that Waheed Alli’s donations of suits and glasses to the Labour leader were reported before the election and the bonfire of public indignation failed to ignite, but that does not make them right.

Equally, it is unclear why Sir Keir should repay his post-election donations but other ministers should not. Although we suspect that if Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, had known that a notional value of £836 would be assigned to her turn as a DJ in Ibiza she might have stayed away from the turntable.

There is a chance that Sir Keir has learned a lesson and that some moral clarity will be achieved in future. A simple rule that no minister, indeed no MP, should accept personal gifts above a certain value would suffice. There should be reasonable exceptions when security is a consideration, as in the prime minister’s attendance at football matches; but no, suits, glasses and Taylor Swift tickets are not “office expenses”.

It looks as if the prime minister understands this now. If he does not, or if he is still hoping to get away with a token show of contrition and carry on with business as usual, he should turn the pages of Mr Johnson’s new book and remind himself how that story ended.