We are all Jennifer Arcuri. Soon we will atone for the tragic human error of going anywhere near Boris Johnson

At the moment it is the prime minister’s old friend’s turn to suffer. In the coming months and years, it will simply be Britain’s. It will be all of ours

If there turns out to have been impropriety at the heart of the Boris Johnson and Jennifer Arcuri story, it should be made absolutely clear that it will be his – not her’s.

The questions Ms Arcuri spent a full hour answering on live television on Monday morning are really questions for the prime minister, not for her. But he will not answer them, so she must.

And this really is the thing. We are all Arcuri. Whoever goes near Johnson, in whatever capacity, appears to ultimately find that it ends in some form of misery or shame. Wives, lovers, political allies and personal friends all find the same. At the moment, it is Arcuri’s turn to suffer. In the coming months and years, it will simply be Britain’s. It will be all of ours.

It will be us, having to do what’s necessary to earn a few quid because we made the clear, yet so constantly repeated human error of having anything to do with who I believe to be the greatest wasteman of them all, our current prime minister.

It should come as no surprise at all that it should fall to Arcuri to have to answer all of the central questions in this scandal that is not her own, because Johnson has yet again found himself short of the moral courage to do so.

He has spent the last three weeks just wafting it all away, in countless broadcast interviews, with words that, when considered in the fresh context now given to them by Arcuri, start to look and feel rather a lot like lies.

“I did not declare an interest because there was no interest to declare,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr, when asked if he had a friendship, or more, with Ms Arcuri, that could have influenced her having received large public grants and taken part in international trade delegations for which she appears significantly under-qualified.

The central allegation is that she was having an intimate relationship with Johnson when he was London mayor, and then, as a result, her company received grants it would otherwise not have done and she went on trade trips that she would otherwise not have gone on.

Her strategy with Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid was to furiously deny there was anything improper about the latter and to nonchalantly refuse to comment on the former.

It is unfortunate to have to say it was not especially convincing, because it is not her scandal. It is his. But nevertheless, it was not.

There is a reason many public relations professionals get extremely rich just for training politicians, sportspeople and company executives to say “no comment” rather than “no” to even the most preposterous question. The moment you deny something, anything at all, it casts doubt over every other occasion on which you have declined to comment.

At least six times, Arcuri called all suggestions that Johnson had ever done her or her company a single favour “categorically untrue”. When asked, at least as many times, whether she really had any right to the public money she had received, or to be on trade delegations that she wasn’t qualified for, she was righteous and somewhat indignant in her response.

But she was also offered at least 10 opportunities to say if her relationship with Johnson was an intimate one – an entirely legitimate question, that is entirely in the public interest. She politely declined them all.

She is, self-evidently, a highly tenacious person. She bumped into Johnson at a boring industry event, befriended him and allegedly talked him into doing his unpaid bit to boost her business.

Even in the eye of this particular storm, she may even still be of the view that her friendship with Johnson was all worth it.

It is not her impropriety. It is his. Her role is the same as all those that have gone before. To carry the can for him, to bear the burden of his actions.

It will be all of ours next.