Have the Tories decided to play the Boris card now that their campaign is under pressure?

If he is not pushing over Labour’s Andrew Gwynne and calling him ‘a big girl’s blouse’ on live television, he’s blowing kisses at Ian Lavery and starting a brawl

Johnson came to blows with Labour campaign chief Gwynne before ‘Question Time’ on Friday (Getty)

Boris Johnson has been everywhere these past couple of days, after months of diplomatic silence while he fulfilled his cabinet role as Foreign Secretary. Despite a few gaffes (discussing alcohol in a Sikh gurdwara to name but one), he has been relatively low-profile since Theresa May rose to power. He has, dare I say it, even seemed rather statesmanlike.

Alas, those days are over. Boris has been out and about on the campaign trail to secure No 10 for Theresa May. If he is not pushing over Labour MPs and calling them “a big girl’s blouse” on live television, he’s tweeting with fervour about the dangers that Marxism presents, with the odd “shame on you” thrown in for good measure. He has been accused, however, of not doing much campaign work in his constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, after his Lib Dem opponent Rosina Robson said: “I have challenged Johnson and his team to a five-a-side match, but he’s not been seen much locally lately.”

Boris is a bit of a laugh, we all know this after years of zip wire fails and tackling young children during rugby matches – he brings the tone down, cracking jokes and guffawing at every given opportunity. But, this time round, when he is still suffering from the “£350m for the NHS” plastered across the side of a battle bus, will his presence be a hindrance or a winner for Theresa May?

He has certainly been distracting. As Theresa May was preparing to be grilled by the audience of Question Time: Leader’s Special, Boris was busy pushing over Andrew Gwynne after being challenged by the Labour MP during a live TV segment. The addition of a few antiquated insults finished off the encounter, with Gwynne asking Boris not to be a “pillock” and to “calm down”. He then proceeded to blow kisses at Ian Lavery, after saying “you pointed in my face [first]” after a heated argument over food banks. The whole thing was pretty bizarre.

Safe to say, this has made most of the national newspapers. One wonders what would have happened if any other MP behaved like this – his shadow counterpart, Emily Thornberry, has said some daft things over the years but I can’t picture her tackling a Tory MP like she’s a forward at Twickenham.

Boris has also been entertaining the public with live tweets during the debates (or non-debates, in the case of the PM). He and Michael Gove have been rather enlightening as to the language they’ve been using (Gove said “totes” yesterday). His rather exotic criticisms of Corbyn have been widely circulated on Twitter – with a lot of replies requesting that he just “shut up”.

This could be a campaign tactic – put out the Evelyn Waugh incarnation of Boris, to make the party look lighter and more amusing. When Elizabeth Day interviewed Boris in 2014, she noted that “[his] diverting guffaw is … a favourite tactic of his when he wishes to avoid answering certain questions”.

This has worked for Boris on multiple occasions (he was elected Mayor of London twice and gained the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat without an ounce of sweat) – but the landscape is somewhat different now.

His favourability has waned since the day after the Brexit vote, in which he looked like a worried child who hadn’t submitted his homework but had to explain to his teacher why. The country is now deadly serious, on both sides, about what they want the future of Britain to look like – one wonders whether Boris’s antics can distract the electorate from the choice they face next week. Could he be, as Harry Mount wondered in the Telegraph a few years back, “doomed to be the eternal jester of the Conservative Party”?

He may have been actively encouraged to get out there and lighten things up a bit in the wake of Theresa May’s manifesto shambles and falling poll rates. He has been reportedly reassured that his job as Foreign Secretary is safe post-election, so they must have faith in him. Either that, or there’s just no way for the Conservatives to control him, and it’s easier to keep him close than have such an unpredictable back bencher.

Tom Watson commented a few weeks back that Boris is “a cack-handed, cheese-headed fopdoodle, with a talent for slummocking about, who would do less damage to Britain's reputation in the world if Theresa May sacked him as Foreign Secretary and replaced him with a souvenir paperweight”. Given his actions over the past couple of days, I’m sure many would be inclined to agree.