Finally Boris is unleashed to slay the opposition’s three-headed beast
What on earth have they been doing with Boris Johnson all this time? Locked him in the stationery cupboard at Tory HQ? Dispatched him on a fact-finding mission to Jupiter? Aside from the odd cameo on Sky News, plus a column for The Sun about Jeremy Corbyn being “a mutton-headed old mugwump”, we’ve hardly heard a peep out of him since the election was called. Yesterday, at a community centre in County Durham, the Foreign Secretary was finally allowed to give his first speech of the campaign. With a mere two days to go.
While Theresa May has toiled miserably through week after week of stilted speeches and agonising interviews, Tory strategists have left their best-known vote-magnet out of the picture. On the subs’ bench? He’s barely set foot in the stadium.
No one, I suspect, is more befuddled by this treatment than Mr Johnson himself. After yesterday’s speech, a journalist asked him why he’d been restricted to such a paltry role. Rummaging distractedly in the upturned tureen of spaghetti that is his hair, Mr Johnson insisted he’d been “engaging solidly with voters” – then went into a three-minute disquisition on the inadequacies of Mr Corbyn.
Whatever Mrs May and her crew think of the Foreign Secretary, party members still love him. This was a farcically short speech – less than 14 minutes, followed by only four questions – yet at every mischievous aside, every grandiloquent polysyllable, the faithful were mewing with pleasure. Mr Johnson hadn’t written any jokes as such, but then he hadn’t needed to; simply saying a long or unusual word was enough to get them giggling like schoolgirls. He pulled out each whimsical locution with a flourish, like a magician with a multi-coloured hankie.
“Temerarious... great glutinous conglomerate... herbivores at the watering hole... puddle of incoherence... Zaphod Beeblebrox...” At one point he imagined Mr Corbyn in government with “Nicola Sturgeon jabbering in one ear, Tim Farron in the other... a tricephalous monster”.
Yes: “tricephalous monster.” It’s hard to imagine Mrs May coming out with an image like that. (“I’m very clear. Jeremy Corbyn is dangerously tricephalous. His tricephalousness is a threat to the security of ordinary families. Every vote for me and my team is a vote to strengthen my hand against tricephalous monsters.” What does “tricephalous” actually mean, Prime Minister? “I’ve been very clear. Tricephalous means tricephalous. And I really don’t think I can be any clearer than that.”)
Outside – as always at Tory campaign events – a gaggle of placardwielding-protesters from Labour had gathered. “If you hate all Tories, clap your hands!” they chanted. “Tories out!”
To their disappointment, however, Mr Johnson did not emerge. Twenty minutes later, there was still no sign of him. Perhaps one of those mysterious Tory strategists had locked all the doors and then stolen silently away.