Boris Johnson is back with a video message of subtle political skill

It is one of the least tangible but most important functions of a prime minister to speak to and for the nation at times of crisis

There was a hoarseness at the start, but then the Boris Johnson we all know was back. No sooner had the prime minister been discharged from hospital after his treatment for coronavirus, he addressed the nation by video from his Twitter account. Like him or not, he is good at what he does.

“It’s hard to find the words,” he said, before going on, seemingly without effort, to find them. He found them to praise and thank the NHS workers, nurses and doctors who had looked after him. Strikingly, he thanked two nurses, Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal, who looked after him overnight. The leader of a government accused of wanting to close our borders lavished praise on people who had come to this country to make their contribution.

That slight catch in his voice apart, he seemed remarkably well for someone for whom, as he put it, “things could have gone either way” just a few days ago. He had even obeyed the instructions of David Cameron’s mother, putting on a proper suit and doing up his tie. And he found the words.

It is one of the least tangible but most important functions of a prime minister to speak to and for the nation at times of crisis. He did it well.

Gone were the blustery unfinished sentences: he had written it down and read it fluently off the autocue. Instead of jokes he had good-natured thanks for his “utterly brilliant” doctors, “men and women, but several of them for some reason called Nick”. Instead of politics he paid eloquent tribute to the unifying force of the NHS.

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It was all politics, of course. The subtext of the video was, “I am in charge.” It was a powerful but indirect reply to all those reports and commentaries about who would deputise for him next if Dominic Raab and Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel were incapacitated (Michael Gove is the answer, but we have moved on), and whether the foreign secretary has the power in the prime minister’s absence to quarantine the No 10 cat.

An earlier statement from No 10 said, “the PM will not be immediately returning to work”, but the video conveyed the opposite message.

It was, above all, a powerful attempt by a Conservative prime minister to lay claim to the national religion, the NHS that Labour built and which Labour still claims for its own despite its being run by Tory governments for 45 of its 72 years of existence.

“Our NHS is the beating heart of this country,” he said. “It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.” He could say it with the immense authority of someone who had just put his life in its care, someone who could claim that it had saved his life, “no question”.

Beyond that, he was drawing on his authority as someone who had suffered from the coronavirus to lead the national effort to contain the damage it is wreaking. Like a medieval king who would lead his troops into battle, he deployed the metaphors of war from the position of someone who knew from personal experience the nature of the “enemy we still don’t entirely understand”.

The rhetoric was all the more powerful for being so un-rhetorical: “A fight we never picked,” he said, as if the virus were the aggressor and we, the peace-loving British people, took up arms reluctantly against it.

As a speech of national leadership and adroit political positioning, it was a small masterpiece. Welcome back, prime minister.