Guto Harri has joined the No 10 circus – and already called his boss a clown

There appears to be some confusion about whether No 10’s brand new King of Epic Banter, Guto Harri, described his boss as ‘not a complete clown’ or merely ‘not all that clownish’ in a Welsh language interview

‘He’s a really likeable character,’ Harri explained, though at the same time not managing to explain why he is currently the most intensely disliked prime minister of perhaps all time (PA Archive)

It is conceivably possible that, on your first day as this particular prime minister’s director of communications, you’d rather have given the press something else to talk about beyond the exact Welsh translation for “complete clown”.

At time of writing, there appears to be some confusion about whether No 10’s brand new King of Epic Banter, Guto Harri, described his new and indeed former boss as “not a complete clown” or merely “not all that clownish”, in a Welsh language interview he had absolutely no reason to give. But the more apposite question, surely, is does it matter?

It’s not immediately obvious whether Boris Johnson has a clear and cunning plan to get out of this gargantuan hole he has dug himself into with his great big shovel of lies. His attempts to defend himself against the now immeasurable volume of allegations against him have been so quarter-arsed that they have ended with the police investigating 12 parties in Downing Street, most of which Johnson denies being at or knowing about, even though it’s his own house.

His defenders, of which there are roughly two, have seemed to suggest that all this can be turned round with a “refresh of his top team”. Because that’s what the entire country, who’ve been spending two months angrily shouting about the various miseries and indignities they went through while Downing Street partied, have been demanding. Everybody who said goodbye to their parents over iPads, cancelled funerals and all the rest of it have all made clear that the only way this can be sorted out is via some new advisers in No 10.

And more to the point, what’s definitely needed, at this moment of intense national rage, is someone who can come in and show them that he’s bang up for a laugh – that you don’t need to take all this stuff too seriously.

Enter Guto Harri. Harri, it should be said, though I personally do not know him, is clearly a very nice person. The liberal metropolitan elite certainly never thanked him enough for his work as a double agent at GB News, where he took a presenting job, then took the knee live on air, causing anywhere between half and both of its viewers to boycott the channel in protest. Harri was gone in a matter of hours. And it’s this sort of devil-may-care insouciance, this insatiable lust for the LOLs that he’s already brought into Downing Street.

He hadn’t even started his first day when he wandered in through the front door ostentatiously waving a great big Tesco bag and then, when asked, announced with a cheeky grin that it was “bottles of mineral water” for the staff? That’s just great material, that. No more suitcases of wine round here. Only mineral water, now.

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By this point, it seems he had already done his interview with Welsh language publication Golwg360, in which he explained that, when Johnson interviewed him for the job on Friday, they ended up singing “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. Because that’s what you get with Johnson. “He’s a really likeable character,” Harri explained, though at the same time not managing to explain why he is currently the most intensely disliked prime minister of perhaps all time.

There are many people, quite possibly all people, in fact, who have come to see that all this, for Johnson, is just a jolly jape, a bit of fun. A game to be won or lost. It is Harri’s job, on Johnson’s behalf, to convince them they’re wrong. It is hard to see them changing their mind about Johnson if, in the middle of what should be the prime minister’s darkest hours, it should transpire he can’t stop himself doing karaoke in the middle of a job interview to replace one of the five senior staff he lost last week in the space of half an hour.

There is a suspicion that while everybody else suffered, the people in Downing Street just carried on tripping the light LOL-tastic, having a grand old time and not caring about anyone or anything else. Johnson has to try and convince people that’s not true, even though everybody can clearly see that it is.

He’s trying to prove to people that he, a 57-year-old man with an unblemished track record of breaking everything and everyone he touches, really can change. And on day one of that effort, we appear to be having a public debate about the Welsh for clown. One suspects it won’t be long before No 10 has another leaving do to organise.