Prime ministers have coped with new babies – it is Johnson being the political absentee father of the nation we should worry about

The latest addition to the Johnson family will probably be well into middle age before they see the benefits of Brexit

Of the many, many things you can chastise Boris Johnson for, becoming a father is surely not one of them. For better or worse (probably better) we’ve moved beyond the time when someone in public life could be brought down for the way they run their private affairs.

Now that Paul Dacre has departed the Daily Mail, no one is around to condemn Johnson for possessing “the morals of an alley cat”, as Dacre in The Spectator did not so long ago. Besides, there are much bigger, more dangerous people toddling around No 10 these days.

You can certainly take the view that Johnson is an absentee father of the nation – and that won’t change. He was – inexplicably – self isolated in a comfy, dry government-owned Jacobean mansion throughout the recent floods. He has only just decided to turn up to a Cobra meeting on the coronavirus outbreak. He has hardly been seen out for weeks, let alone been jetting around Europe, say, on a goodwill mission to get the Brexit talks off to a good start.

Johnson is one of life’s sybarites, the nearest thing the 21st century has thrown up to the prince regent. Johnson will not change his habits (good and bad) just because he has had the happy news about another child.

Downing Street has seen young children before and coped with them. David Cameron, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were no better or worse than they would otherwise have been, for example, for being both distracted by their familial duties. Well, maybe they could have used a little more sleep, but nothing more serious.

We can already be fairly confident that Johnson is unlikely to skip cabinet because he’s still changing a nappy (though it might actually be the more tolerable way for him to spend a morning). He pays as much attention to anything – permanent secretaries, economic data, the Middle East – as he sees fit, which is usually the absolute minimum required. He prefers to have a lot of “spare bandwidth”, to use the modern expression. Besides, he and Carrie Symonds, environmental campaigner in her own right, will have an army of helpers to take care of the baby in any case. The pair are not going to be a “just about managing” family.

Johnson and his allies in the press will, though, make the most of the political opportunity. He will look virile, in all senses (as if it mattered in the trade talks with Trump or the EU). The baby will be treated – as already is happening – to the kind of saccharine excesses of a royal baby. There will be colour supplements of this delightful, absurdly idealised family unit, conveniently airbrushing out Johnson’s other families, relationships and offspring. The usual questions will be asked, routinely: kid’s names, godparents, christening arrangements, birthing in hospital or home, favourite toy, nursery decoration, nanny, first words... There’ll be an awful lot of guff, and not just from baby Johnson’s behind.

It’s only natural. This is politics, after all. According to Alastair Campbell’s diaries, when Campbell rang Blair very shortly after baby Leo was born in May 2000, “I called through, spoke to TB, who sounded very happy about it. I heard the baby and TB said: ‘Here you are, Leo, talk to your spin doctor.’”

Maybe baby Johnson will be given a similar introduction to Dominic Cummings, who could help bring the infant up to be a “weirdo and misfit”.

With Leo Blair, Campbell made sure a film crew doing a documentary on No 10 were there to film the media outside; he fretted about when to release the baby pics, and precisely how happy Blair should look. Campbell observed: “I was in a bit of a no-win situation: do too little and we alienate the press, too much and they would say we were exploiting it.”

Given the current disposition of the British press, there is more chance of the Symonds-Johnson baby being a no-lose situation. It is joyous news that over time can wipe a cabinet sacking, an incipient recession or a by-election defeat off the front pages.

The only other thing we can probably be sure of is that baby Johnson will probably be well into middle age before they see the benefits of Brexit, a Labour government or England win the World Cup again. What a life lies ahead for this powerful symbol of the post-Brexit generation.