Faced with questions from MPs, Boris Johnson was like a blundering schoolboy | Martin Kettle

His appearance at the Commons liaison committee saw him way out of his depth – on Dominic Cummings and everything else

Boris Johnson signed off this afternoon by telling the Commons liaison committee how much he had enjoyed his first meeting with them. If that’s true, then either I’m a Dutchman or Johnson has a weird way of having fun. No wonder he has managed to go almost a year before attending Westminster’s most prestigious committee. He came determined to say nothing new about Dominic Cummings and more or less managed it, though it came at a cost. On the wider issues of his government’s response to the pandemic, he mostly flannelled. Some of the questioners, notably Greg Clark, Stephen Timms, Robert Halfon and Darren Jones, beat him all ends up. Yvette Cooper delivered some icy remarks that should send shivers down his spine. Leadership Winston Churchill style it most definitely was not. Billy Bunter in the headmaster’s study kept coming to mind.

Johnson said he had spent a lot of time preparing for the meeting. It felt like a wasted effort. To expect the grasp of detail normally expected of a modern leader was and is hopeless. Issue after issue had to be parked, with promises of written replies later. Because he knew he had to be on his best behaviour in front of the assembled select committee chairs, there was less recourse to the irrelevant analogies and verbal folderols that Johnson often hides behind. The contrast with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May – all of whom were consistently across the detail and submitted more often to attending the committee – was a painful one.

Related: Boris Johnson has failed to protect the nation. Instead he's protecting one man | Aditya Chakrabortty

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