The Power of Imagery

Last year I wrote a pack for secondary school students, encouraging them to think about the pandemic. It included extracts from Boris Johnson’s speeches. The aim was not to consider his political judgement or personal honesty, but to focus on the images he employed, and the ways in which those might work on the reader.

I was reminded of that this week, idly glancing through extracts from Jennifer Arcuri’s diary, where she faithfully records the alternating aggression and faux modesty of his chat-up line: “How can I be the thrust - the throttle - your mere footstep as you make your career?”

Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star rebelling against years of abuse by an older, much more powerful man, offers a very different tone: “Even if it’s just striking a stone with a pebble, or a moth attacking a flame, I will tell the truth about you.”

Finally, while many of us were expecting Johnson to lie through his teeth as soon as he became Prime Minister, to some loyalist Conservatives this has come as an unpleasant surprise. But few of them have expressed it with the delicacy of Huw Merriman, chair of the transport committee:

“This is the danger of selling perpetual sunlight and then leaving it to others to explain the arrival of moonlight.”