It was once his greatest asset – but language is now failing Boris Johnson

The way the prime minister uses highly political language designed for electioneering is deeply ill fitted to the febrile state in which the nation finds itself

It’s a shame that the ultimate ambition for many successful politicians must be to become prime minister. The skills earned during years at the coalface often leave the rising star deeply under-prepared for the top job, which requires an altogether different set of talents and personal characteristics. It’s no good being a great politician inside No 10; once there, you have to ditch politics and practice statecraft instead. You have to show leadership, measure, poise. Boris Johnson was always going to be found wanting.

What makes Boris (look, we all know who I’m talking about even if I only use his first name) a brilliant politician is his inability to speak a single sentence in public without using highly politicised language, as if he’s permanently on the cusp of snatching an unexpected by-election victory.

A journalist friend once told me a story about an encounter he had with Johnson while working on a local paper in London. It was during the Blair years; Johnson was still a long way from meaningful power and yet still played the part of a colourful character in our national politics. One day a large tree reportedly fell into the road – I can’t recall whether it was supposed to be in Johnson’s garden, or simply nearby – causing the young journalist to be sent out to knock on the door and ask what had happened. Without missing a beat, Johnson gave a brilliant quote about the tree looking solid and healthy on the outside but, like the Labour government, being rotten at its core. This is politics. He knows how to play it. He knows how to win.

Unfortunately for Britain, Boris Johnson is still playing local politics even though he’s now our prime minister and we find ourselves entering the third year of a global pandemic which has cost millions of lives. The way he uses highly political language designed for electioneering is deeply ill fitted to the febrile state in which the nation finds itself now, with large portions of the population still vaccine hesitant, infection rates rising and hospital wards filling with the healthy unvaccinated. And, as if anyone could forget, a new variant on the loose which may require yet another vaccination programme.

Only yesterday we saw two such examples of this political nous causing havoc with the government’s national message over the latest wave of cases and the emergence of the omicron variant. First, as he told a national press conference that a booster jab would be offered to every adult by the end of January, Johnson said the vaccine programme would be put “on steroids”. That’s the language of electioneering creeping into an important scientific update, a public information broadcast. More importantly, a broadcast aimed at a population that doesn’t have a full grasp on the science.

The vaccine has nothing to do with steroids; steriods are a strong anti-inflammatory drug sometimes used to treat severe symptoms of Covid-19 among hospital inpatients and, in some trials, at home. Perhaps this seems obvious to you. To the many who are taking their pandemic news from social media channels including Twitter headlines, Facebook links and TikTok videos, it is not. Mixing fact and metaphor like this is a dangerous approach. It is the prime minister’s job at a precipice like the one on which we teeter to deliver straightforward fact. Information without bias or spin. He can’t seem to do it. He’s playing politics with the nation’s health instead.

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Second came the more predictable Boris approach: leaving Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, to play bad cop, warning revellers off the temptation of a Christmas party and asking them personally to think hard about what form of socialising was really “necessary” mid-pandemic. Meanwhile the prime minister took on the jollier, festive role of good cop. He’s “not changing the guidance on how you should be living your life”; he’s urging you not to cancel events such as Christmas parties and nativity plays. If and when restrictions have to be brought in, he wants to dodge responsibility, even when it is – immediately, directly, and solely – his.

The leader is unfit for the job because he doesn’t know how to moderate his tone to the occasion. The Peppa Pig farce last week might have dropped an early hint that the gift of the gab is finally starting to lose its political power. Today Johnson discovers himself unable to find the words to clarify whether or not his office went ahead and held a Christmas party last year, when the virus was in widespread circulation and only a handful of the population was vaccinated – and after which he went on to (in his own politicised terms) “cancel Christmas”.

We’re all exhausted by the course of this pandemic. After a difficult week, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus called for “timely and clear” decisions that won’t leave families “in limbo” over Christmas. What a test for a man who relies on nothing more than faded charm.