Language matters – and nobody knows that more than Boris Johnson

The consistently best political communicator I have ever heard was Bill Clinton – by quite a margin. As a campaigner and two-term US president, from 1993 to 2001, he was clear and compelling; even when he squirmed with embarrassment as the Monica Lewinsky revelations emerged. Quite unusually for an American president, he was adept at reading international, as well as US, audiences. He also excelled at distilling quite complicated arguments so that they could be widely understood.

After Clinton might come Jacques Chirac, campaigning for the French Presidency in 1995 and 2002, and, after him – on a good, sober, day – Boris Yeltsin, during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then, as the first President of Russia. An outlier, entering thanks to his hugely under-estimated political savvy, might be Gerhard Schroeder, Germany’s Chancellor from 1998 to 2005, and still regarded there as a master-persuader.

To an extent, of course, the judgement depends on how you define “best”. I would define it as holding an audience and successfully getting your message across to the maximum number of people. What is in that message comes second – after all, if you can’t communicate it effectively, it is not going to matter that much. Which prompts the question about how today’s political leaders stack up.