Court Jester

I’m genuinely amazed that Boris Johnson has a reputation for being a good speaker and also for being funny.

He is one of the poorest speakers I’ve ever heard; rambling, incoherent, covering his lack of content with a selection of pre-planned classical references and three word slogans that have to be crowbarred in. And then his jokes are equally pre-planned, laboured and poorly delivered. He has no ability I can see to think on his feet and produce a spontaneous comeback.

PMQs are like a prolonged battering where his only responses are lies (“we have a world class track and trace system”), bizarre complaints about the leader of the opposition not offering unfettered support to the government (absolutely not their job, particularly if they see it screwing up royally) and then rehearsed jokes that he delivers whether they fit the circumstances or not.

Today was a real collectors piece though. He was caught out question after question (best being when he was asked if he’d read the report of the risks of a second wave and could only respond that he was “aware of it”; I mean, I’m aware of string theory, but I doubt that will be enough to get me the Nobel prize). As it got to the last one, he realised he hadn’t used that clever joke about Calvin Klein Dom had rehearsed with him, and got so excited that it didn’t occur to him that it might not be an appropriate answer to a question about how he would like to respond to the relatives of the 48,000 casualties so far.

Sociopathic clown.