Why has the gift of the gab deserted Boris Johnson?

The PM’s oratorical gifts found the perfect fit with the Leave campaign – but the challenges of power have left him floundering, writes Sean O’Grady, as evidenced by his disastrous performance in front of the CBI

Jonhson talks Peppa Pig to Britain’s business leaders (Getty)

Are you OK”. It’s quite routine for a prime minister to give a few interviews after an important policy speech, but not to be asked about the state of his health. It wasn’t just that Boris Johnson lost his way in his address to the CBI conference, as if he had dropped the pages of a previously unread script in the car on the way in. It wasn’t so much the fact that he took an inordinate time to finish a sentence about… well, the audience had forgotten the start before he got to the end. Some of his references were tangential, almost bafflingly so, such as the dilation on Peppa the Pig (not a euphemism), which echoed the musings on Kermit the Frog he offered the UN General Assembly a few weeks ago – but that was “normal for Boris”. It’s hard to know why he thinks that “Mother Nature” dislikes working from home, but that’s not the first mystery he’s sprung on the nation either.

It was more the PM’s physical state that alarmed some observers, and the possibility that his distracted demeanour is a symptom of some weakness in his intellectual faculties. Long Covid, for example, is known to leave sufferers with “brain fog” and an inability to concentrate. Johnson had a near-fatal pre-vaccine brush with Covid early in the pandemic, so there may be lingering effects, though not consistent. His voice sounded rather deep and husky, but perhaps he had had a late night - he has a young baby, a large workload and is partial to enjoying himself regardless, as we know.

At the CBI, he told the impertinent reporter who’d asked if he was OK that people had “got the vast majority of the points” he wanted to make and that the speech “went over well”. Maybe, but he has also been called a clown and a disgrace.

Johnson’s speeches have become increasingly disappointing. Most of the better ones are delivered in the sort of cheerleading, boosterish mode he perfected so well as mayor of London, a job with few powers but plenty of profile, and he visibly enjoyed getting stuck on a zip wire, waving a giant union flag at the Beijing Olympics and helping American tech consultants by offering to be their “thrust”. In other words, the less content there is in a Johnson speech, the better. The Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum was a bespoke fit to Johnson’s oratorical and presentational gifts – waving pasties and kipppers, cracking puns and waving his arms, but not requiring any understanding of what a customs union involves. The 2019 election campaign, full of vacuous slogans, crude but vaguely defined policies and a panto villain in Jeremy Corbyn were also like playing at home for him. His party leadership, campaign speeches and those to the party conference fit a familiar formula, the only surprises being how bad the puns can get.

In power, with policies to adumbrate and compromises to explain, the challenges are more exacting, and far less suited to the expansive Johnson persona. He is a political personality who prefers always to love in the future, in a time before the cheques drawn on his account get cashed. Contending with the present is less fun. The keynote “levelling up” speech a few months ago left bystanders – a more appropriate term than “audience” – none the wiser about the government’s “moral mission” as he now terms it. Similarly with the “Kermit” climate change speech and the slightly embarrassing cheerleading at Cop26, congratulating the leaders of other nations on their climate goals as if they’d just put in the winning bid at a Conservative Association charity auction of one of his ties.

Or it could simply be that Johnson is lazy and spoiled, and, now that he is PM, there is no one with the authority to tell him off or stop him doing daft things like asking Nadine Dorries to be culture secretary. We were warned, though, back in 2016 when Michael Gove destroyed Johnson’s then leadership bid by telling the world, a bit late in the day, that the chap he’d been backing was useless and couldn’t be bothered to do the work. There’s no reason to think that Johnson has changed much since he became premier.