ain, mendacious, inattentive, conflicts of interest, unfaithful with wives and incapable of keeping his staff. And that is just the last US president. When Boris Johnson should be attending to the nation’s affairs, he mimics Donald Trump as a daily fount of salaciousness and scandal. Most of it is his fault, if not all. The saga of the Downing Street flat would be laughable in most countries. On one occasion, having travelled to Balmoral from the No 10 attic, Margaret Thatcher was said to have been aghast at the comparison with her own living quarters. No 10 was never intended as anything but an office pad. When the Blairs arrived with their family, they had to move into No 11. Incoming prime ministers should not suffer the indignity of worrying over who pays to decorate the virtual prison in which they must live, let alone have to pay for it themselves. Of all the sleaze that has surged round this government, Johnson and Carrie Symonds getting help to do up their flat must be the most trivial. There should be an impartial trust, as at Chequers, to ensure the prime minister’s living arrangements can be comfortable and uncontroversial. That leaves the rest. Johnson is now besieged by inquiries caused by his apparent lack of moral scruple in the conduct of the nation’s affairs. That he still enjoys some populist support, as did Trump, is beside the point. Johnson’s greatest weakness is his inability to judge able colleagues, from senior ministers to personal advisers. By ignoring talent and relying on cronies, sycophants and Brexiters, he has been beset by sackings, resignations and accusations of corruption. His administration now faces at least six separate embarrassing inquiries. The coronavirus “VIP lane” for crony contracts was, on one estimate, worth £3.7bn. Johnson’s interim chief of staff, and recently appointed special envoy to the Gulf, Lord Udny-Lister, contrived also to be a consultant for property developers, not fully declaring his interest and shamelessly negotiating deals while in public service. He slid from office last week. The planning minister, Robert Jenrick, fresh from last year’s controversy over a planning decision made after dining with a Tory donor directly effected, is now helping to dismantle half a century of British town planning. His latest decision, that any retail premises can become housing without permission, could hasten the death of the high street. Honesty used to be claimed as a unique selling proposition of the British government. Today a British diplomat criticising a foreign regime for corruption would be laughed out of court. Procurement protocols are unenforced. Conflicts of interest seem rife. The parliament building swarms with licensed lobbyists whose wealth testifies to their effectiveness. Mystery surrounds whether unnamed party donors covered the cost of wallpaper at the prime minister’s flat. One key must lie in the status and discipline of the civil service. The days of the Yes Minister satire are long gone, when permanent officials balanced power with political short-termism. That short-termism is now dominant, led by the ambitions of politicians fed by advisers inexperienced in the technicalities, and ethics, of public life. Nothing illustrates this better than the ongoing drama of Dominic Cummings. A clever and potentially valuable reformer was misappointed to a role for which he was clearly unsuited. Johnson duly lost his chief strategist last November – as he has lost numerous other key figures along the way – and the fallout continues today. The prime minister and the Tories may get away with it all, but the country is paying a high price for this incompetence. Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist