Yes, he demeaned his office and had to go – but was Boris all bad?

In truth, he’d run out of breaks. His whole career, his whole life, has been about with getting away with things, of breaking the bounds of what was acceptable but still emerging intact.

But this week, with so many of his backbenchers and cabinet arranged against him, however much he twisted and turned, there was no way he could break out of this one.

They were against him not because of policy but because of personality – they had tired of his inability to tell the truth, of his belief that everything was a wizard wheeze that he’d be able to wheedle his way around, of his continual searching for a break. From the Paterson affair to the Pincher scandal through wallpapergate, partygate and treehousegate – more gates than a North East town centre – they concluded at last that he was utterly indefensible.

There was no way the greased piglet could squeeze his way to freedom this time.

But he has managed to gain a little wriggle room. Imagine having the nerve, after losing your job because of your lies and incompetence, to propose that you stay on for a few more months – and getting away with it.

His podium performance lacked any contrition to either party or people for the errors he has made and for the anger he has caused, particularly over partygate as he became the first Prime Minister to be fined for breaking his own rules.

But as he reeled off his achievements – Brexit, vaccine and Ukraine – he appeared to be speaking directly areas such as ours.

“We must keep levelling up going, unleashing the potential of every part of our country,” he said. Interestingly, the first appointment to his interim cabinet was his new levelling up secretary to replace the snakelike Michael Gove, and he brought back Greg Clark, the MP for Tunbridge Wells who comes from South Bank where his family ran a milk company. Mr Clark was David Cameron’s “minister for Teesside” more than a decade ago when for a brief moment the Tories tried to woo such hard to reach places.

So levelling up, for all it is a vague and undefined term, seems close to Mr Johnson’s heart and perhaps, over time when the hurt and dismay over his neverending shenanigans has faded, the North East will remember him with a degree of positivity.

And not just because of the boost he gave the Teesdale tourist industry by allowing Dominic Cummings to remain in office despite flagrantly breaching the spirit of the lockdown regulations and of traffic safety rules by driving to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight.

Boris Johnson in Hartlepool last May the morning after his by-election victory which will now go down as his high watermark

History will now record that the high water mark of Johnsonism was the Hartlepool by-election just over a year ago, when, through talking up the town, he was cheered as he walked beside the Trincomalee the morning after his victory.

Mr Johnson has reminded the Conservative Party that the North East is not full of “moaning minnies” and that places like Redcar, Thornaby, Bishop Auckland and Consett exist and are deserving of attention. There has been money for Teesworks and for the Blyth gigafactory; there has been money for many ailing town centres through the Towns Fund; there has been a push for devolution for Durham and North Yorkshire, and, most importantly, there are the 1,500 Treasury jobs coming to Darlington. If that plan is fulfilled by the next leader, it will make a difference to the town’s economy but also to the mindset of the civil service. This newspaper has been calling for jobs to be moved out of London to the provinces for at least 30 years, so it would be hypocritical not to acknowledge that Mr Johnson has left a legacy in a way that his predecessors Theresa May and David Cameron did not.

It is piecemeal, it is incoherent, it doesn’t address poverty or life expectancy, it has barely begun, but will the next Conservative leader – even if it is the Richmond MP Rishi Sunak, it will be a low tax, low spend traditional Tory looking to bolster heartland support in the shires – be so accommodating?

None of this excuses any of the other shenanigans that have so besmirched the reputation of party, of politics and the position of Prime Minister. As Mr Sunak said, people want and expect their government to be run “properly, competently and seriously”, and if he can’t do that, a Prime Minister doesn’t deserve any breaks.