Gone is bumbling Boris, now comes Mr Slick: Boris ditches the bluffing for smooth performance as girlfriend sprinkles her magic dust
IT looks like a photograph of any other politician on an engagement. But the snap of Boris Johnson arriving for tea at the Royal Horticultural Society in Surrey today tells a story of just how much the man who could be our next PM has been changed by his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds. He stands in […]
IT looks like a photograph of any other politician on an engagement.
But the snap of Boris Johnson arriving for tea at the Royal Horticultural Society in Surrey today tells a story of just how much the man who could be our next PM has been changed by his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds.
He stands in a smart, uncrumpled suit with hardly a hair out of place. It is a sign of the increasingly professional PR operation which Symonds has brought to Boris’ campaign.
One of the things which has always endeared Boris to the public has been his refusal to obey the normal rules of public life.
Where other politicians go around spouting slogans and with outfits chosen by professional image-makers, Boris has always been happy to appear as his own dishevelled self.
His hair is famously a mess and his clothes never quite fit.
Where other MPs give the impression as having prepared every word before they speak, Boris has always spoken with flowery language, often throwing in a word or two of Latin.
What’s more, he has always been attracted to television cameras like a moth to a lightbulb, never turning down an opportunity to promote himself.
But with his lifetime ambition of being Prime Minister finally on the verge of being realised, it is suddenly a very different Boris that we are seeing. Enter: Mr Slick.
He has become shy, rationing media appearances to the bare minimum he thinks he can get away with.
When he does appear, he is smarter, less rambling and more inclined to speak in prep-prepared phrases.
It isn’t hard to spot the new influence in his life.
Although only 31 – 24 years younger than Boris himself – Carrie Symonds already has a career as PR chief for Conservative Central Office behind her. She now works for Bloomberg.
But as if her day job weren’t challenging enough, she has an even more important evening and weekend job: tidying up Boris. It is a job she has taken to with great relish.
Perhaps stung by Jeremy Hunt’s accusation that he is a “coward” for avoiding TC debates, Boris had a full day of engagements today – including interviews with LBC and TalkRadio as well as a walkabout in Richmond, West London and tea at the Royal Horticultural Society in Wisley.
Besides his tidier appearance – his short is now always tucked in – there is a big change in Boris’ body language.
While the new Boris gestures with his hands just as enthusiastically as the old one, he has introduced a new gesture – clenched fists – to give the impression of determination.
Unlike the old Boris, he managed to sit through a half-hour interview on LBC without once ruffling his hair.
He is much more guarded with language. On LBC, host Nick Ferrari questioned him 26 times on the origin of the photograph of him and Carrie in the Sussex garden.
Where the old Boris would have answered the question with humour, now he evaded it altogether, always beginning with the same phrase: “What people really want to know about…”
It is a sign that he had been coached specifically in how to reply to that question.
Gone is the bluffing. Gone is the bumbling. He is no longer winging his way through his interviews – he is sticking to a very carefully-worded script.
The closest he came today to courting controversy was to tell TalkRadio that Britain will leave the EU on October 31 “do or die”.
It appeared to be a clear commitment to a No Deal exit on that date if his other plans fall through, something which he has previously avoided saying. The political world should take it seriously – because there are signs he now means everything he says.
When talking about his time as Mayor of London, the old Boris would have stuttered and launched into talking about his achievements with great rhetorical flourish.
The new Boris, by contrast, has slipped into a habit of other politicians – he ran off a list of statistics which he hoped would present his time at City Hall in good light.
Gone is the self-deprecation that was such a trademark of the old Boris. Not once in his appearances over the past couple of days – which included a TV interview with BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg – has he made a joke at his own expense.
While the old Boris would have avoided slogans, the new Boris twice used the words “infrastructure, education, technology” – which indicates it is a phrase dreamed up by his campaign team and which he has been instructed to repeat at every opportunity.
On Nick Ferrari’s show he made a couple of apologies – one for “the offence I’ve caused” describing niqab-wearers as looking like letterboxes and bank robbers, and one for the government’s social care policies.
Boris is no stranger to apology – it was has always been part of his self-deprecating character. But there was an uncharacteristic sincerity in his words.
Yet when on the subject where he has most cause to apologise – telling the House of Commons as foreign secretary that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training journalists in Iran before she was arrested – he has avoided saying sorry.
Instead he’s sticking to what sounds like another carefully-crafted line: that criticising the British government will merely help to boost the Iranian regime.
Towards the end of the TalkRadio studio, his careful PR act seemed to be unravelling a bit.
He ruffled his hair twice, started rambling that he relaxed in his spare time by making buses from cardboard boxes and couldn’t remember the last sports match he watched other than an England cricket match at which he fell asleep and couldn’t remember who England’s opponents had been.
It was a brief glimpse of the old Boris – one which we are unlikely to be seeing much of in future if he succeeds in achieving his ambition of reaching Downing Street.
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