I am pleased to say that work is in hand to produce a new print version of my book Speechwriting for Leaders, now being reworked and improved as Speeches for Leaders.

In that book I talk about ‘authenticity’ and Boris Johnson:

The British politician Boris Johnson shows how to do this: he deliberately plays with language, peppering his articles and speeches with provocative or outlandish words, constructions, and images:

The Victorians were so vain as to believe that because they had managed to extend their dominions so far, and because the map was pink from east to west, that this must somehow reflect the reality of divine providence: that God saw a special virtue in the British people, and appointed them to rule the waves.

 And because they had grown up reading such tosh the post-war establishment drew the logical but equally absurd conclusion that the shrinking of Britain must also represent a moral verdict on them all, but in this case the opposite. That we were now decadent, and that decline had set in with all the ineluctability of death watch beetle in the church tower.

Thatcher changed all that. She put a stop to the talk of decline and she made it possible for people to speak without complete embarrassment of putting the “great” back into Britain.

And she gave us a new idea—or revived an old one. That Britain was or could be an enterprising and free-booting sort of culture, with the salt breeze ruffling our hair. A buccaneering environment where there was no shame—quite the reverse—in getting rich.

Audiences weary of spin–doctors and speeches processed through focus groups don’t know what to expect, and enjoy listening to Boris. In a world of far too many dull, ‘safe’ speeches, those leaders who embrace originality—and, yes, risk-taking—stand out. Audiences hear honesty, confidence … more please!

Mr Johnson likes words. He throws them out like showers of sparks from a firework. This creates a sense of bravura but cleverly focused whimsy that in turn projects confidence and ‘grip’.

Thus his latest piece on the post-election depression and derangement in the Labour Party and the prospects for Jeremy Corbyn. The sagging obese target is far too fat to miss, and Boris duly lands punch after squelchy punch. It merits a closer look from the point of view of Technique.

Look how he starts:

It begins with a look of slow and wondering amazement – as if he hardly dares believe his luck; and then the certainty builds, millisecond by millisecond. Then the eyebrows go up even higher, and the mouth gapes and the eyes pop and the epiglottis vibrates as he lets out a long, whooping yell of sheer incredulous ecstasy.

That is how police chief Brody reacts in the last reel of Jaws when, by some fluke, he manages to shoot a bullet right into the oxygen tank in the mouth of the shark, and the ravening fish improbably explodes. That is frankly how we in the Tory party feel as we watch what is happening in the Labour movement today.

It begins…  What a fine way to start. Plunge in!

The opening passage is revealed to be a reference to Jaws: see, I do popular culture like the best of ’em.

The certainty builds, millisecond by millisecond. Note the gratuitous scientific pseudo-precision. He might have chanced his arm by adding a surreal gloss: milliband by milliband.

The epiglottis vibrates… A weird unnecessary medical touch.

The ravening fish… When was the last time you heard the word super word ravening used in polite conversation?

And so into the meat of the article.

We aren’t yet whooping, but our eyebrows are twitching north in incredulity. We are filled with disbelief that this can really be taking place, a distrust of the evidence of our senses.

Our eyebrows are twitching north in incredulity. Is this man related to P G Wodehouse?

 Jeremy Corbyn is a bearded version of Ken Livingstone (I think they even go to the same tailor for their vests).

At this point the piece soars to greatness, nay immortality. Look at that line about vests. It packs in all sorts of amusing condescending yet somehow self-deprecating insinuations. It conveys the awful idea that Corbyn and Livingstone are irredeemable style-losers: both wear vests, an old-fashioned naff working-class thing to do (the more so if the vest outline is visible through a polyester shirt). Yet it attaches that idea to the thought that they go to a tailor to get their vests made. This very thought can come only from someone quite used to the idea of going to a tailor to get clothes made, ie someone unabashedly ‘posh’ and rich, namely B Johnson himself. In effect he is saying I’m so posh that I can make jokes about it to attack people in vests championing the vesty workers – and you’ll all laugh, so I win!

On he goes:

He [Corbyn] would take this country back to the 1970s, or perhaps even the 1790s.

Funny, but alas not true. The 1790s featured tiny government and an odious new ‘income tax’ of 2d in the pound – the very last thing Corbyn wants.

This is a man who, for more than 30 years, has made a political career out of being explicitly and avowedly on the Spartist Left. He is a frondist, an inhabitant of the semi-Trot margin, an unrepentant lover of oppositionalism.

A neat chatterati reference to über-loony Private Eye Marxist Dave Spart. And the cunningly accurate but almost never heard word frondist. This hearks back to a continental term for a rebel of somewhat marginal impact, a frondista. 

Yes, there really are a few hundred thousand people who seriously think that we should turn back the clock, take huge swathes of industry back into public ownership and massively expand the state.

The problem for Labour is that they do not represent the majority of people in this country. That is the real lesson of this campaign so far: that the mass of the Labour Party is totally out of touch with reality and common sense.

Spot on, and the smart way to finish. He ‘frames’ Corbyn and Corbynism as a loopy but dangerous departure from good old British common sense. If Labour do choose Corbyn, that will be the heart of the devastating attack on him when the next election comes around. Take no chances with Corbyn – full of loony ideology, dresses badly, but – worst of all – no common sense.