Daily catch-up: Boris gave straight answers to questions but still managed to sound confused

The man who wants to lead us out of the EU had his chance in the Sunday swivel chair

Some people seemed to think Boris Johnson's interview with Andrew Marr yesterday was floundering, rambling, all over the shop, not up to it and bad on detail. Some suggested that his hesitant performance was because he doesn't really believe that Britain should leave the EU.

Plainly, a lot of people find his manner unimpressive and I don't think "a load of cobblers" is prime ministerial language, but I thought he made serious arguments. The transcript reveals persuasive points about EU interference in Crossrail tunnel design and the rules on tipper trucks on London streets.

The Stronger In campaign seized on Johnson's comment that leaving the EU "might" mean a period of "dislocation, uncertainty and job loss". It is the job of the Stronger In campaign to point out such things, but reporting gotcha and counter-gotcha is not the only purpose of journalism.

I wrote in The Independent on Sunday that the reporting of Stuart Rose's comment that wages might rise if we left the EU as a gaffe was evidence of a bias against understanding. Johnson's "gaffe" was the mirror image. He said: "It might or it might not" cause job losses, which was a reasonable acceptance that there would be risks and opportunities that need to be balanced.

I said yesterday that Johnson had put himself forward to be the prime minister who negotiates the terms of our exit from the EU, but that he had not said where he stands on the linked questions of free movement of EU workers and access to the single market. To Marr, I thought he was clear that he wants to restrict freedom of movement, that he wants a free trade relationship with the EU analogous to Nafta, the North American Free Trade Association. He said that EU "tariffs are well down and we should be able to trade freely with that area". His argument that the federalist ambitions of the European Court of Justice turns a free trade area into a proto-country is a strong one.

And I thought he was right to accuse Marr of "equivocating" over the meaning the single market: he was trying to distinguish between a free-trade area and a single legal area.

He was interesting and right that in the 1972 European Communities Act the UK Parliament limited its sovereignty, and cannot reclaim it without repealing that Act.

I thought he was right to chide Marr for personalising the question. Yes, Johnson is ambitious. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is pointless to ask him about it. His answer or deflection tells the viewer nothing about what he protested was "the real choice", a "fundamental choice", in this referendum.

Yesterday I said of Johnson: "Perhaps, on The Andrew Marr Show, he will follow Lord Rose’s example and give a straight answer to some straight questions."

I thought he did. Or, at least, he tried to.

µ The Top 10 in The New Review, the Independent on Sunday magazine, was Big Speeches That Flopped. Perhaps I should do a follow-up: Big Interviews That Flopped.

µ Brilliant traffic-light running fact-check of the 2016 US election from the New York Times, up to last week's Republican debate, spotted by Memphis Barker. ‏Something I hope to copy in The Independent's bright digital-only future.

µ And finally, thanks to Moose Allain ‏for this:

"I bought my sons a cheese grater today, in the hope they’ll go on to grate things."