A spokeswoman has been appointed ‘to communicate with the nation on behalf of the Prime Minister’. He apparently needs ‘a protective ring of steel’ and Tories feel that she will be the answer. So getting someone else to say what the PM thinks solves all problems? Really?
It is inconceivable that Boris Johnson’s hero Pericles would have sent someone else to speak and answer questions on his behalf before Athens’s democratic citizen assembly. (The spokesman would have been given the world’s shortest shrift — ‘a confession before execution’ — anyway.)
The reason why Pericles would never have dreamed of such idiocy was that his success as a statesman depended entirely upon his personal ability to persuade. So when he rose to speak, his whole reputation was on the line.
He would have been appalled at the idea of outsourcing it to someone else.
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