It is right that Boris Johnson takes full responsibility for the humiliation in North Shropshire

Boris Johnson has taken full responsibility for the humiliation of the North Shropshire by-election, as well he might.

It was, after all, his decision to approve the ill-fated plan to save Owen Paterson from censure in the Commons, which set in motion the train of events that led to the loss of a seat the Tories have held since before Queen Victoria ascended the throne.

The opportunity to muzzle Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who is due to investigate his own ethical standards, was just too tempting for Mr Johsinson – and it was a fateful misstep.

It all ended in the resignation of Mr Paterson, and the probable resignation of the prime minister before much longer. After the Paterson affair came the string of blunders and scandals with which the country is all-too familiar.

So far as can be discerned, it seems that sleaze, the disastrous “Peppa Pig” speech at the CBI conference, partygate and reforms to agricultural support were responsible for the defeat, and all had much to do with Mr Johnson personally.

Things can only get worse for Mr Johnson over the next few weeks, assuming he survives that long. Mr Johnson is apparently “confident” that he will be personally exonerated and that he himself was not involved in rule-breaking. As is the way of these things, there may be some hedged-around sentence in the report that can be seized upon by Mr Johnson and his allies to show what an upstanding chap he is.

It won’t matter, though, because it is already apparent that he presided over a culture of hypocrisy and “one rule for them”, and has done for his entire life. It seems hard to believe that the pizza party he dropped into was in compliance with the public health rules, or that the Zoom quiz he was chairing didn’t have little pods of spads gathered closely together around monitors.

In any case, Mr Johnson will be further embarrassed and ridiculed. At worst, the public and party reaction will be so bad that he will be asked to quit.

Mr Johnson pleads with the media to lift their eyes and focus on the booster rollout and on skills. Very well, let us reflect on one of the worst Covid death rates in Europe, how the vaccine programme for young people has been unduly slow, and now the boosters are losing the race against Omicron.

Before long, the hospitalisation rates will climb so high that emergency measures will be required – and parliament will need to be recalled to approve them (as Mr Johnson promised his MPs).

More people will lose their lives unnecessarily, because, once again, the prime minister was complacent about the Delta variant and the state of the NHS, even before Omicron arrived.

As for skills, it is all very well, but there is a shortage of skilled and unskilled labour because of Brexit and because his Home Office refuses to issue sufficient work visas. These shortages have also exacerbated inflationary pressures in the economy and triggered an interest rate rise.

These are the “issues about them”, the voters, that Mr Johnson wants to stress, but they also represent failures of policy and leadership.

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Omicron will continue to make a fool of Mr Johnson in the coming weeks, the third coronavirus to do so – because of a pattern of misjudgements.

In the new year, new border regulations will further strangle exports to the EU, inflation will continue to accelerate, and tax hikes will take effect in the spring. Next year’s round of local elections look lost already.

Faced with a revived Labour Party and with the Liberal Democrats back from the dead, the SNP retaining a firm grip on Scotland and his party way behind in the polls, the most difficult task of all for Mr Johnson will be to convince his colleagues that he is still a winner.