Political memoirs often put one in mind of George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’. For Orwell, clichés and vague language are bad because they conceal the truth. Boris Johnson’s writing is bad in a different way. It makes one think of another Orwell essay, on the ‘extraordinary, artificial, repetitive style’ of the stories in boys’ weeklies about public-school life. Like them, Unleashed waddles under the weight of redundant verbiage. Orwell quotes from the Magnet comic:

Shutting up was not really in Billy Bunter’s line. He seldom shut up, though often requested to do so. On the present awful occasion the fat Owl of Greyfriars was less inclined than ever to shut up. And he did not shut up! He groaned, and groaned, and went on groaning.

Compare this with a passage from Johnson: 

I knew that a general election is a gamble, a crapshoot. The public were feeling frankly over-consulted. They were fed up with being constantly asked to give their opinion of us politicians in this needy does-my-bum-look-big-in-this way. They wanted us all to shut