Boris Johnson’s ‘onanism’ insult shows exactly why leaking political speeches is an effective election tactic

Onanism. It’s virtually the only new thing that Boris Johnson has said in this election campaign. And the funny thing is he didn’t actually say it.

The story of how the arcane biblical term – meaning masturbation – came to enter the political discourse of the 2019 election tells us a lot about Johnson’s campaign tactics.

Any candidate on the campaign trail has to make a lot of speeches. And they have a limited set of slogans and talking points they want to drum into the collective public mind. So those speeches tend to get repetitive.

Parties know that the media will soon tire of reporting the same lines, so when they release extracts from a speech the evening before it is delivered, they always include a little nugget of news – a policy announcement, a telling phrase, a fresh angle – in the hope of grabbing headlines in the morning papers and bulletins. Correspondents scan through the reams of familiar, well-worn rhetoric – “Get Brexit done”, “dither and delay”, “coalition of chaos” (that last one so old it dates back to David Cameron in 2015, and that didn’t work out so well, did it?) – and the nuggets leap out from the page, asking to be reported.

In this particular case, the nuggets on offer were two words – “groundhoggery” and “onanism”. The more fastidious will have used the former, but most agreed the latter was more eye-catching and indeed it featured in many publications.

But when the prime minister actually got up to deliver his address at a factory in Rugby, onanism was there none. The section briefed overnight didn’t feature at all. And when The Sun’s esteemed political editor Tom Newton Dunn confronted Johnson and asked him where it had gone, a sheepish prime minister feigned ignorance, suggesting that “a stray early draft” had somehow found its way into the press “by a process I don’t pretend to understand”.

When a pre-briefed line is dropped from a speech, it usually signifies a last-minute change of mind or a behind-the-scenes row about policy. In this case, it looks far more like a campaigning tactic. The prime minister gets to disseminate a vulgar and slightly sordid slur on his opponent – and by extension on all voters who want a Final Say referendum. But he doesn’t suffer the indignity of having the word actually pass his lips in front of the TV cameras, running the risk that it will feature in clips played on evening bulletins or – horror of horrors – become a meme to be shared on social media. Not very statesmanlike, after all.

Some readers get very aggravated by journalists reporting what a politician is about to say. “Report what has happened, not what you think is going to happen!” they plead. On the evidence of the case of the mysterious vanishing onanist, one might have to admit they have a point.

Yours

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor