When you ask those at CCHQ why this election isn’t going to be like 2017, one of the answers they give is that Boris Johnson is a better campaigner than Theresa May. Tonight’s Tory launch was meant to show that off. The Tories held it in the evening so that they could have a crowd there—Johnson needs an audience to really get going as a speaker—and to create better pictures for tonight’s news bulletins.
Boris Johnson, unsurprisingly, hit many of the same themes in this speech that he made in Downing Street earlier. But in a sign of how nervous the Tories are about the idea they didn’t need to call this election, both Johnson and his warm-up act James Cleverly tried to argue that the Tories didn’t want this election but had to call it as parliament was paralysed and frustrating Brexit.
As well as his usual attack of Corbyn for wanting ‘two referendums’ next year, Boris Johnson tried to go after Labour on economic competence.
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