Johnson about to be revealed as political genius or total muppet

In the aftermath of Boris Johnson’s interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr last weekend, another broadcaster tweeted some media advice for the Prime Minister.

Kay Burley of Sky News observed that Johnson mid-interview was forever looking off camera and giving the appearance of non-concentration. He should improve his technique, said Burley.

“When the PM looks off camera (presumably to his aides) it makes him look shifty. He really needs to stop doing that.”

One can see what Burley means. Johnson has done hardly any television or radio interviews in his career. This crippling lack of media experience and expertise is probably what explains Johnson’s long record of election defeats and disappointments.

Actually, no. Johnson is one of the most calculating and clever media performers of the age. The Johnson schtick – by turns disruptive, quirky, distracted, determined – is designed to be transgressive, to signal to the viewer that he can see that they can see that it’s a game and he – authentic Boris – is letting them in on the joke at the expense of his fellow-journalists.

Occasionally, Johnson will come up against an interviewer who flattens him (Andrew Neil or Eddie Mair) but generally the Boris routine works on his own terms. It has helped him win the London mayoralty twice. He has lost just one parliamentary election, fighting a no hope seat. He’s won the rest. And he became Tory leader and Prime Minister.

Now he has landed himself in the biggest fight of his life. At Tory conference this week in Manchester, the question that hacks and observers were asking each other most frequently, in the conversations I was involved in anyway, was the following. What on earth is going to happen? The other question I heard most was the standard Tory party conference enquiry. Is this champagne or have they run out and swapped it for prosecco?

The answer to the first and key question – what on earth happens next? – is, of course, “no-one has a clue.”

Despite this, the Tories seemed in rather a jolly mood in Manchester. The boost in membership to 191,000 seems to have increased attendance and there was considerable energy in the fringe events.

But the truth is that everyone – baffled cabinet ministers, weary voters, excited members, cynical journalists – is waiting to find out whether Boris Johnson is a political genius or a total muppet.

If out of the chaos the EU moves a little in response to his proposals and a Brexit deal passes the Commons before the 31st of October, he will have survived his Falklands moment and go down as an audacious Prime Minister who toyed with his opponents and then outplayed them at the very last.

If, instead of that, he is forced from office and loses the subsequent general election, he will, rather than meeting his own Churchillian day of destiny, be said to have suffered a day of density. And if that happens he will go down in history as a complete clown who cocked it up.

Not long to wait for everyone to find out which it is.