Nowhere is his absolute contempt for your intelligence more on display than in his latest election broadcast.

The Conservatives have released a video suggests you should vote for Boris Johnson because he drinks tea, eats chips and makes strange shapes with his eyes.

Boris Johnson thinks you are an idiot.

Nowhere is his absolute contempt for your intelligence more on display than in his latest election broadcast.

In the past, when politicians have posted these sort of videos I have fact checked them. Within the last six months I have done it with both UKIP and Brexit Party politicians.

And yet I can’t do that with this video. Is this because his comments were so watertight and researched not a single hole could not be picked in them? No.

The reason we can not fact check it is because his nearly five minutes video contained literally no facts, no verifiable figures and no substance.

You may think this is strange. After all, these videos are basically a job interview. You, the electorate, are the boss and he is the prospective employee. The job is the role of Prime Minister and within this interview process he is trying to convince you he has the necessary policies and ideas to make you safer, more prosperous and healthier.

At normal job interview you put forward evidence that you are equipped for a role. In Boris Johnson’s defence he doesn’t have much experience with this.

Sonia Purnell pointed out is her book Just Boris: Boris Johnson: The Irresistible Rise of a Political Celebrity, that Mr Johnson hasn’t had to have that many interviews.

In late 1987 he began work as a graduate trainee at The Times thanks to family connections (though he was dismissed after making up a quote).

He also got a job at The Telegraph from knowing editor Max Hastings, through his Oxford University Union presidency.

So how do you fill a five minute election video with no facts. In turns out you seize on a pile of cliches and make out like you’re just one of us.

It seems that Mr Johnson (I refuse to board the cliché coach and call him Boris or Bojo) believes that simply making you believe he is like you is enough for you to give him the keys to our NHS, armed forces and children’s futures.

1. Vote Boris: He loves chips

In less than five minutes Johnson managed to talk about: fish and chips, steak and oven chips, takeaways and marminte.

You can almost hear his top advisor Dominic Cummings’ thought process.

“Everyone has to eat food right?” he thinks as he goes through the data from dozens of focus groups (while simultaneously catching up on Russia Today).

“If people see that Boris likes food then they will find him relatable and want him in charge.”

The amount Johnson mentions the food he likes is frankly ridiculous.

Trust me, I also eat food…
It is like he Googled “what do normal people cook” and just said he liked it.

“Fish and chips or a Sunday roast?” he was asked.

He replied: “I think fish and chips on a cold night on a beach, you can’t beat it.”

You hear that? He likes chips, you like chips. He likes the beach, you like the beach. Is there a plan to stop pollution of our beaches? Who cares! Beach, beach, beach, beach, beach.

If you are suspicious of Johnson’s culinary skills look no further than his comment on his Brexit deal which is “oven ready” so you just “slam it in the microwave and it is there”…

2. Vote Boris: He likes old music

“What is your favourite band?” asked the resident brown nose filming the video.

“It is either The Clash or the Rolling Stones. Mainly I listen to the Rolling Stones nowadays so make of that what you will.”

Everyone likes the Rolling Stones and The Clash so therefore everyone will like Johnson right?

Most people have a soft spot for the bands that were big during their university years but not Johnson.

The may be because he is a rock purist. Or it maybe because the UK number one during his freshers week at Oxford were the “tank-topped bumboys” Culture Club with Karma Chameleon.

Don’t think that pretending to like a universally popular band is this is cliched and opportunistic? Just ask Gordon Brown (if he doesn’t have his noise cancelling headphones on listening to the Arctic Monkeys).

To be fair, this cliché may not have come from focus groups but instead from the Madonna song Music which reads:

“Music makes the people come together.

“Music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel.”

3. Vote Boris: He likes tea

If the love of Marmite, chips and Mick Jagger doesn’t make you think Johnson is ready to lead our country then guess what – the guy makes his own tea!

In the video he is filmed making his own brew. Not only that but he is such a man of the people he used one of those boiling water taps that people have in their offices. No expensive Russell Hobbs kettle for him.

‘I like tea, vote for me’

Of course it is entirely feasible that he always makes his own tea though he did make one absolutely rookie error. An error so dire it is likely to create more mistrust than his rampant history of sexual infidelity. The man left the tea bag in to walk around the office?

Perhaps he is such an alpha male leader that no tea is strong enough for him – or maybe he just never makes the tea himself and thinks the bag just dissolves.

As anyone who has made tea in work knows, it is all about trying to get the tea bag from the cup to the bin without dripping on the floor and annoying the cleaner.

4. Vote Boris: He has a dog

“Woof woof!”

What is that sound? No not Johnson when he sees a “lovely piece of tottie” but the sound of his dog.

“How do you typically start your day,” says a voice off camera (whose title is presumably head of relatable question asking).

The Tory leader replied: “I tend to get pretty early and take the job job down for a walk and the dog does his business.”

In the great spectrum of what people love, at one end we have politicians and at the other we have dogs. Clearly there was a hope that this “cute by association” would help, though it could lead to a fall in people’s trust in pooches.

Perhaps this was an entirely innocent chat about his pet and in no way an attempt to use this cliché to gain votes. To be fair, he has only had a dog for about six weeks so it may have been considered noteworthy.

5. Vote Boris: He eats takeaways

We all know that feeling when we get home from a hard day at work and can’t be bothered to cook. We know we should save money and be healthy but just can’t do it. So instead we order take out with the delicious flavours laced with guilt.

Turns out this feeling is EXACTLY the same whether you have worked all day is a hospital or spent and afternoon slowly eroding democratic conventions.

When asked what the most surprising thing about being PM is you might expect it to be “the weight of responsibility” or “pressure of affecting people’s”. Not Johnson. What really surprised Boris “one of us” Johnson was his “incredulity” when he couldn’t “actually get a Thai curry delivered to Number 10” because of security.

One of us! One of us!

6. Vote Boris: He’s nice to the nice young Asian man in the office

‘Who looks less comfortable here? As he makes his way round the office you will notice that almost no one (except him) is under the age of 40.

That is presumably because they are dynamic, forward thinking and down with the kids.

Think a Boris Johnson government will be wracked by accusations of Islamohpobia and questions about him using words like “piccannies” and “watermelon smiles” in his columns? Not a bit of it.

As Johnson makes his way through a corridor a guy, who appears to be of Asian descent, walks down the corridor towards him (totally unprompted obviously).

Johnson greets him (not by name) with a jovial “How are you? Nice to see you.” He solidified this with a hearty backslap.

Now before you hound me on Twitter I am not suggesting that this bloke was undeserving of his starring role in the cliché fest. I am simply suggesting that in a video which was clearly choreographed from start to finish it is no accident that it was a BAME person Johnson decided to be “mates” with.

Or was it an accident, he just happened to stand up and walk past while the Prime Minister was filming a party political broadcast?

7. Vote Boris: He does that thing with his eyes…

‘Could I be more down with the kids?’
The body language, facial expressions and wild gestures used in this video have been honed over years of appearing on Have I Got News For You.

Some of these were clearly supposed to be Churchillian and resemble a football fan celebrating a goal on the terraces.

It didn’t quite work.

At the very end of the video he gave a fist pump which would have made a new born baby look strong.

After saying that we need to “unleash the potential of this whole country” he offers perhaps the most half hearted fist pump since he voted Theresa May’s deal in March…

Beyond the clichés this video says one thing: Vote for me – I am like you.

Bendor Grosvenor, who is a co-presenter of BBC4’s Britain’s Lost Masterpieces, has voted Conservative for more than 20 years but blames “Johnsonian Toryism” and Brexit for driving “the broad church into the crypt”.

Grosvenor, 41, said that scandals, political purges and hardline support for leaving the European Union was driving many old-fashioned, liberal conservatives away.

The broadcaster, who was educated at Harrow and Cambridge and lives near Edinburgh, says he will now vote for the SNP.

He became a Tory member in 1997 and took an active role in the party after meeting Hugo Swire, the former Conservative shadow arts minister. “We ended up writing the cultural and heritage section of the Tory manifesto for the 2005 election. That was the highlight of my political career,” he said.

“Each time Kenneth Clarke ran for the leadership I was there supporting his campaign as a donor and a bit of a worker.”

Recent political events, including the illegal prorogation of parliament in August, had filled him with frustration and sadness, he said. “The Tory party has been the most successful political party in modern history, and yet it is running its campaign at the moment as if it couldn’t run a bath.”

Comments made this week by the Conservative MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Andrew Bridgen about the Grenfell fire were the last straw for Grosvenor, who is related to the Duke of Westminster.

Mr Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, said that it would have been “common sense” for tower residents to ignore advice given to them by firefighters and flee the burning west London tower block in 2017. After public outcry Mr Bridgen went on Radio 4’s PM to defend the comments, saying that Mr Rees-Mogg would have made a “better decision” than authority figures on the night.

On Twitter Grosvenor wrote: “I’ve voted for, worked for, been a member of, and even a historian of, the Conservative Party. It is time now to destroy it, to smash it utterly, so that people like Rees-Mogg and Bridgen can never be near power again.

“It was that jaw dropping interview with Andrew Bridgen on Radio 4 after Jacob Rees-Mogg’s similarly extraordinary comments. I have been drifting apart from the conservatives for a long time. But yesterday I just thought it is time.”

The expulsion of Tory ministers and MPs who rebelled against Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan in September — including Mr Clarke, who has now stood down — was another “watershed moment where people like me thought there was no return,” Grosvenor added. “I plead guilty to what Brexiteers call Brexit derangement syndrome.

“Small ‘c’ conservative values I have always signed up for — as old-fashioned as it sounds, valuing the constitution as it is in part. On the decision to prorogue parliament and the all the legal ramifications and Supreme Court case: If the Conservative party has contempt for those basic conservative tenets then what is left of it?”

The Tory leadership was also in the crosshairs. “When I was working in politics I encountered Boris Johnson a few times,” Grosvenor said. “He always seemed to be shambolic and to bear the impression of whoever sat on him last. I don’t think that proves to make effective leadership at moments of crisis like this.”

Grosvenor, who recently discovered a work by Peter Paul Rubens for his TV show, now pins his hopes on the SNP before the general election on December 12.

“I think I would vote for the SNP. Brexit, the May government and now the Johnson government have so shaken the foundations of everything that we took to be the settled constitutional and political order. Now all bets are off.

“I don’t view any of the options with great enthusiasm. It’s a moment of profound frustration and sadness that it’s come to this.”