Boris: People of Britain, this is a historic moment. I have said sorry to someone for something. It has never happened before. You will no doubt all have seen my heartfelt, sincere and extremely carefully worded and convincing apology to the House of Commons.

You will have heard me talking about sharing your pain at loved ones dying alone and all that sort of stuff that I trotted out so movingly.

And I'm sure now no one can be in any doubt about how very, very sorry I am that you the public have formed the opinion, however misguided and technically inaccurate, that I have done something wrong, even though I haven't…