In other circumstances, it’d be tempting to get the popcorn out and settle in to enjoy the last days of this sclerotic, deranged Tory government. But the fact that they’re determined to wreck the joint before they’re evicted means we can’t revel too much in their self-inflicted agony.

Nothing gave us a clearer insight into the mindset of these wretched people than the grizzly Michelle Mone episode. In 2015, she was given a life peerage by unelected cabinet minister David Cameron for services to lingerie and slimming pills; her journey from council flat girl to Baroness made her just the sort of poster girl to give their lordships a happy frisson on the green benches.

When Covid came a’ knocking, she did what unscrupulous villains have always done in times of crisis. She spotted the possibility of making a few bob for herself and set to it with a will. She consistently and vehemently denied any involvement with the Knox Group run by her husband, which was awarded two contracts for PPE Medro in May and June 2020, worth around £203 million. Estimates vary, but a return of around 30% on such investments seems to be standard.

PPE Medro’s tender for supply of the equipment was processed via a VIP lane, established by the Cabinet Office to fast-track offers from companies introduced through government connections. Like relatively recently ennobled Baronesses, perhaps. Just sayin’.

Just for the sake of balance, it’s worth pointing out that m’lady, her husband and their associates weren’t the only ones snuffling around for any spare PPE money going. Celebrity lothario Matt Hancock proved to be extremely liberal in spreading the taxpayers’ largesse – and he was just part of a wider trend that saw ten Tory MPs and peers earn a nifty £1.6 billion through the same VIP lane. And if, just if, any of that might have been justified by the good that it did, the fact that £4 billion of unusable PPE went up in smoke puts an end to that forlorn hope.

But you could never accuse Mone and her like of the simple art of lying low and saying nothing when faced with their delinquency. Having strenuously denied any connection to PPE Medro, she went on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC programme to admit – despite unremittingly robust claims from her legal team to the contrary – that, yep, OK, she kinda knew about it all along. So she’d been lying, asks Kuenssberg. If you like, she concedes. And she’d consistently lied to the press? ‘That’s not a crime,’ she pouts.

Maybe she’d been emboldened by the amoebic Piers Morgan who, a couple of days earlier, puffingly challenged the legal opinion that ‘there can be no doubt’ about his knowledge of phones being hacked by his journalists. In denying any guilt, Morgan, like Mone, was following the zeitgeist in public life when it comes to facing up to indiscretions, misdemeanours and plain old mistakes. When in doubt, double down. Go on the offensive. Your lies exposed? Fear not – tell a bigger one. Plough on.

In the hellish misery of global events, this plays out in a macabre inferno of needless deaths encouraged by the inhumanity  of villains from Russia to Sudan to Israel and all points in between. It’s not a war, it’s a military operation. They’re not civilian casualties, they’re human shields.  It might have become a touch cheap to quote Orwell’s 1984, but you won’t have to wait too long into the TV news to hear some blowhard spouting a variant of ‘war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.’

And as the Tories frantically scrabble around for something, anything, to save their bedraggled backsides, they just keep flogging the same old lies. Of these, the biggest and most persistent relates to the 4% of migrants who enter this country through ‘irregular means’, quite often in the precarious death-traps of small boats. These people, we are asked to believe, are one of the country’s top five problems. It has thrust the unloved Rishi Sunak into the welcoming arms of hard-right Italian leader Giorgia Meloni, with whom he shares the view that desperate people looking to improve their lot are a threat to our way of life.

Not the thieves robbing the public purse for their own benefit, you understand. Not the editors of newspapers who encourage wicked intrusion into our privacy. Not the liars, grabbers and gropers who inhabit public office. Not the profiteers who pay subsistence wages for vital services and so leave critical jobs unfilled. For these are the people who know their way to fast-lane, VIP treatment and who have the brass neck to deny their privilege when their venality is exposed.  And by their friends in high office you shall know them.