Off the record

The carefully managed campaign to get Boris Johnson installed in Downing Street involves ensuring that news of any impending visits are clouded in secrecy until the last possible moment.

The strategy was in place this week for Mr Johnson’s whistlestop visit to Kent.

Even party activists were not told the identity of the political VIP in question for fear that the news might leak out and attract the unwelcome attention of protesters or opponents.

Party members were told it was likely to be Iain Duncan-Smith coming rather than the man himself. Presumably this decoy was based on the calculation that Duncan-Smith was rated as highly unlikely to be of interest to anyone outside the party. Or indeed in it.

The choice of a garden centre in Sevenoaks for the visit by Mr Johnson was not exactly throwing the would-be leader into a political bear pit.

But he didn’t have it all his own way - one man took him to task over his tenure at the foreign office, which he felt had let the government down, and queried what he had achieved.

Boris looked mildly aghast at the temerity of the gentleman in question but this being Sevenoaks, it was not exactly a stand-up row and as political ambushes go was pretty mildmannered.

Will the much-criticised transport secretary Chris

Grayling be part of Boris’s team in government?

After the Brexit ferry fiasco, some believe he is on borrowed time but Mr Johnson would not be drawn on the subject saying the question came under the category of “measuring up the curtains” and he would not be, er, drawn.

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