GUTO HARRI: The anger we've seen from Boris this week is nothing to the nuclear ... trends now

'Go with dignity.' That's what his detractors kept telling him. And until the bitter end Boris Johnson has been portrayed by critics as some seditious Trumpian lunatic for refusing to fade away without fuss.

They are furious that he questions the basis on which he was driven from office and now from Parliament. They seem surprised that he has been resentful not remorseful, defiant not defeated and, yes, angry.

I stood behind him outside 10 Downing Street last summer when he made clear that his sense of 'duty' and 'obligation' made him want to stay and deliver what he promised the electorate. He also dared to describe as 'eccentric' the idea of changing leader when the Government had such a large mandate and had so much to do.

Critics were outraged then, but the original draft went further, and part of me wishes we'd all heard aloud what some of us saw on screen when he was minded to confront the plotters full-on. 

Here's what he sent me around dawn on that fateful July 7: 'In the last 48 hours I have been struck by how many colleagues have asked me to resign with dignity as though they represented some euthanasia clinic and I have replied that dignity is a grossly overrated commodity and that I prefer to fight to the end.'

Euthanasia is a sensitive and delicate subject, so he was probably wise to drop it then, but I share it with you now to be clear how bitter and betrayed he felt. Far from lashing out at the time, he was actually pulling his punches.

Another line taken out was a clear attack on Tory MPs: 'I cannot ask good friends and colleagues to Super-Glue Humpty together again when they are frankly hesitant or not supportive.'

Later on, he had a further dig at a parliamentary party that he had previously described as 'psychotic', suggesting that an addiction to social media had robbed them of any meaningful sense of perspective. 'There is still part of me that thinks if only we could have turned off Twitter and sent MPs off to the beach we could have sorted this out and gone on to thrash Labour at the next election.'

He had a point, and I'd always thought that if we'd made it to the summer recess he'd have been there for the rest of the parliament. We were 13 days short and historically unlucky that one man's sad and sordid misdemeanours overshadowed three international summits where Boris had been at his best. Chris Pincher (then deputy chief whip) prompted the final implosion but the fuse had been lit a fortnight before.

Oliver Dowden, once nicknamed 'the undertaker', had tried to put Boris in a coffin by resigning over the results of the local elections last June. They were bad, but not as bad as the ones we've just had with

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