Boris Johnson’s answer to the question of whether Joe Biden is ‘woke’ was revealing

Political journalists sweat blood trying to hone the perfect question that will winkle out the truth from an evasive politician.

But often, it’s the simple ones which deliver the real surprises. A seemingly innocent inquiry about an everyday issue can catch out politicians who have been briefed within an inch of their lives to avoid letting anything slip on the economy or public services or diplomatic relations.

A prime example is the question thrown at Boris Johnson in the middle of a TV interview on Wednesday: is Joe Biden “woke”?

You could almost hear the cogs whirring round in the PM’s brain as he emitted a series of grunts and harrumphs, his eyes casting from side to side in hunt for an answer, before he came up with: “There’s nothing wrong with being ‘woke’.” Followed almost immediately by a hasty confirmation that he was very keen on preserving tradition and history and all that stuff.

In Johnson’s case, the question drew out his split political personality. On the one hand, he is quite liberal and free-and-easy in his personal views and wouldn’t like people thinking him some sort of fusty old prune – but on the other he’s trying to maintain a culture war by stoking up the anger of the kind of voters who believe that statues of Winston Churchill are in danger of being torn down by gangs of “snowflakes”.

It was certainly an easier statement to parse than his earlier response to a question about what he did in his spare time, which elicited the bizarre response that he liked to make buses out of old boxes. Portraying the PM as an overgrown schoolboy with a peculiar transport-related fixation, it was a line no spin-doctor in his worst dreams could have imagined him uttering.

The most remarkable such answer in recent times was of course Theresa May’s immortal reply when asked for the naughtiest thing she’d ever done.

“There are times, I have to confess, when me and my friend, sort of, used to run through the fields of wheat,” she said. “The farmers weren’t too pleased about that.”

At a stroke, conceptions of May were overturned. Peeking out from behind the flinty-hearted Iron Maiden of her public persona was a vision of the bookish girl with an oversized sense of duty, breaking out from the confines of her vicarage home to indulge in the kind of wholesome rural misdemeanour that would scarcely have passed for naughty in a Famous Five book.

Almost as revelatory was David Cameron saying that he’d like people to support West Ham United, before remembering that it was the other team in claret and blue – Aston Villa – who were supposed to be his favourites, something which cemented his image as a phoney in the minds of all football fans.

Gordon Brown’s comment that the Arctic Monkeys “really wake you up in the morning” – when he later admitted he’d never heard the band – gave the impression of a man who feared he was not in touch with modern Britain, flailing around for something hip to make him seem relevant.

For some politicians, a comment can seem so revelatory of character that it sticks to them even though it’s not true.

So it was with Tony Blair, mocked for years for having claimed that he saw Jackie Milburn play, when the Newcastle United star retired when the future PM was only four and living in Australia.

It wasn’t until after he left office that a newspaper reporter admitted having misreported his comment. But for many people, it remains the go-to put-down for a man they suspected was a little too boastful and too ready to varnish the truth.

Which just goes to show that a telling personal detail may reveal more than the most finely crafted soundbite – even if it’s not true.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock 

Political editor