Locked out of your phone, Boris? Bzzz! Try again and pull the other one

Does anybody who has pulled off Boris Johnson’s marital gymnastics really believe he can’t remember his passcode? No – but he couldn’t care less, writes Tom Peck

Johnson demonstrates, yet again, that improvement is beyond him (PA)

You only get a few wrong attempts at guessing an iPhone’s passcode before the thing becomes bricked and worthless, so you can see why Boris Johnson might be wary. He’s been here before.

“There were no parties.” Bzzz! Wrong. Try again.

“There were parties but I didn’t know about them.” Bzzz! No. You have one more attempt.

“I didn’t know there were any parties even though I attended them.” Bzzz! Wrong, sorry. This prime minister has been destroyed. Restored to its factory settings. No, Mr Johnson. Step away from the parliamentary Genius bar. Please leave the Apple Store. We will not have you, or your friends for that matter, abusing our staff. This is a problem entirely of your own making.

That could be one explanation, anyway. There is, admittedly, another one: and that would be that the world’s worst liar is simply at it again.

A few months ago, he told the Covid inquiry that he would dearly love to submit to them all of his WhatsApp messages, but – sadly – not quite all of them. The ones from the start of the pandemic, until mid-2021, were “off limits” because they were on a phone he’d been told by the security services he must never switch on, after it became widely known that the actual prime minister’s actual phone number had been freely available on the internet for 15 years.

In some ways, it’s just as well. When the prime minister’s number was effectively published to the world two years ago, I know at least three stag do WhatsApp groups to which he was added just for the lols, and it may be a somewhat suboptimal outcome if the contents of those WhatsApp groups were now submitted to a public inquiry.

But the latest on the saga is that the security services are no longer concerned about the phone being switched back on. The problem now is that Johnson reckons he’s forgotten his passcode.

It’s impossible to tell, really, whether the very much former prime minister actually expects anyone to believe this kind of thing, or even remotely cares?

Everyone has a friend, don’t they, who is a pretend technophobe. Who makes great sway out of not being able to “work this bloody thing”, but who is in fact hiding behind performative boomerism to get out all social engagements they can’t be arsed to attend. I happened to be with this particular friend of mine when his boss rang, and his fingers suddenly flew over the keys of said phone with the kind of panicked expertise usually only seen in the Rubik’s Cube World Championships.

Does anyone believe that a man who has dared to attempt his level of marital gymnastics could possibly be so hopeless with a mobile phone?

Various “security experts” (and by “security experts” we mean “anyone who has ever owned an iPhone”) have taken about 10 seconds to point out that you absolutely do not need to know the passcode to upload the old profile to a new phone. That the messages, if backed up, which they are highly likely to have been, could be accessed in about five minutes, which lands the former prime minister in what is hard to believe is not a very obvious contempt of court.

But Johnson, very obviously, doesn’t care. The boat has sailed. The point of the Covid inquiry is to “learn lessons” for future pandemics. So that the same thing doesn’t just happen again. Johnson demonstrates, yet again, that improvement is beyond him.