In December 2019, Boris Johnson drove a Brexit-themed JCB through a wall of cardboard boxes marked ‘Deadlock’ and into Downing Street.

He had been elected with a landslide majority of 80 seats.

He had promised to get Brexit done. And he set about doing so.

Now, he planned, it was on to the “sunlit uplands” he had promised.

But halfway through his five-year term of office, he has hit a monumental mid-term lull.

Everywhere families have been slashing their budgets amid the cost-of-living crisis.

Yesterday the Bank of England predicted growth will contract in the final three months of 2022 as the cost squeeze sees households rein in their spending.

The UK is set to narrowly miss a technical recession – defined as two quarters in a row of falling gross domestic product.

Governor Andrew Bailey said: “I recognise the hardship this will cause for many people in the UK, particularly those on the lowest incomes, often with little or no savings, who are hit hardest by increases in the prices of basic necessities like food and energy.”

The country and the economy have taken a battering over the past two years from the pandemic – now compounded by the war in Ukraine.

And with them, the prime minister’s political prospects have taken a battering as well.

These body blows of war and disease have been accompanied by multiplying allegations of sleaze and impropriety – a political death by a thousand cuts.

Any single one of these political hurdles he may have overcome, but not all of them in quick succession.

Throughout Boris Johnson’s premiership, pollster YouGov has asked people “Do you think that Boris Johnson is doing well or badly as Prime Minister?”. At the start of the pandemic, the public approved of his job performance.

This time two years ago, 57% of people thought he was doing a good job as PM. His approval rating dipped for the rest of the year, before briefly turning positive again in May 2021.

Since then, his approval rating has rolled gradually downhill.

The most recent data – for April 7 this year – shows 65% of people thought he was doing badly at his job, compared to just 29% who thought he was doing well.

Closer to home, people haven’t been too impressed either.

At the beginning of April, website ConservativeHome published its monthly ‘Cabinet League Table’ showing what party members thought of various high profile Conservative politicians.

After three straight months of negative ratings, Boris Johnson was sat comfortably — having been buoyed by the reaction to how he had responded to the war in Ukraine.

May’s edition has not yet been published, but it seems unlikely that his spot will look quite so comfy after a month of Westminster sleaze and tightening belts.

More recently, a Telegraph investigation found that his own party was now disavowing the prime minister.

It found Johnson had not featured at all in the 113 local election adverts pushed by the Conservative Party’s Facebook account in the first few days of May.

And leaflets in some parts of the country described candidates as ‘Local Conservatives’ – as if to distance themselves from the Westminster party.

One East Anglian MP even confided to me that they would not wager money on Boris Johnson leading the Conservatives into the next general election.

An unknown number of other MPs have also written letters of no confidence in the prime minister.

Boris Johnson’s boom was Brexit. He promised people he would get it done and he did.

What we are seeing now is likely to be his bust.