Well, this is it, folks.
In one final act of cruelty, Boris Johnson made the nation get up at a truly ungodly hour to watch him finally depart Downing Street.
It’s actually the second time I’ve had to watch a Boris Johnson speech before breakfast - the first being a similarly strained address delivered in New York an hour after the Supreme Court had decided he’d broken the law and lied to the Queen.
At least now he’s on a plane, heading to Scotland to tell her “sorry about all that, I’m off now.”
The speech itself was typically rambling, boosterish and fanciful.
Trumpeting his successes, he claimed to have built hospitals and fixed social care - neither of which is true.
And shallow was the pool of his Prime Ministerial achievements that he had to return to Brexit three times in a five minute speech.
He bitterly complained that he’d been the victim of moved goalposts, changed rules - the £20 grand rug pulled from beneath his scuffed-up black brogues.
There was, of course no mention of the Covid rule-breaking that actually led to his downfall.
Nor was there mention of his having tried to rewrite the rules to get his mate off the hook, or asking his ethics advisor something so horrific he immediately resigned, or misleading the Commons, or promoting a man he’d been warned had repeatedly acted inappropriately to put him in charge of discipline.
And as the leader of the world’s great democracies gave his farewell address, with the world’s media looking on - he did so to the Benny Hill theme tune, which wafted over Whitehall from a protester’s speaker like a new national anthem.
The soundtrack gave the event all the gravitas it deserved. Makes you proud to be British.
Johnson’s biggest fans - Nadine Dorries, Ric Holden, Peter Bone and a couple of dozen others - gathered to cheer him off like teenagers at a BTS concert - standing, appropriately, at the end of the road.
He half-heartedly instructed them to put an end to the politics and infighting and throw their weight behind Liz Truss.
But the performance was tracing-paper thin.
And even as he and Carrie got in the car to drive off into the sunrise, there was already talk of his return.
Last night’s flurry of resignations saw a pretorian guard of Boris stans return to the backbenches, perhaps to become the bedrock of his Cabinet-in-exile.
And the titillating reference to ancient Roman politician Cincinnatus set tongues wagging.
Johnson used the 5th century figure as an example of a once-powerful figure heading off for a quiet retirement.
Perhaps it was Johnson’s notorious allergy to detail that led him to skip the bit about Cincinnatus returning from retirement to become a tyrant dictator.
Or maybe he just couldn’t resist a coded signal to his classics-reading chums that like the Terminator - he’ll be back.
