The Paterson debacle shows that Johnson no longer has advisers - he has courtiers | Simon Jenkins

After months of purges, there is no one left in the cabinet who is willing to hold the prime minister to account

No one doubted it, not even Boris Johnson. The attempt to rescue his friend Owen Paterson from a mild penalty for a breach of the parliamentary code was an abject failure.

The Tories’ short-lived attempt to tear up the independent system for combating parliamentary sleaze has been scrapped. After the government’s U-turn, MPs were due a fresh vote over whether to suspend Paterson from th...