What kind of Prime Minister will Boris Johnson be now?

Boris Johnson has just given a fully-charged victory speech at a rally in London, telling joyful activists that today marks ‘a new dawn and a new government’.

The event was emblazoned with a new logo, ‘The People’s Government’ as the Tories claim victory for representing all parts of the country. Johnson echoed this in his speech, saying he was ‘humbled’ by those who had voted for his party for the first time and promising that he would ‘never take your support for granted’. And he told his party that it ‘must change’. 

The language was deliberately centrist, Blairite and welcoming rather than sneering. Johnson even remembered something that Theresa May forgot two years ago, to apologise to those Tory colleagues who lost their seats overnight. 

But this was still a speech given in poetry, while governing happens in prose.