His northern friends might find Johnson is ‘all mouth and no trousers’

We live in the age of empty slogans and vacuous mission statements. Any business, any organisation, is nothing unless it possesses a phrase to which it clings and on closer reading is meaningless. The government, of course, is not immune. We’ve had “Get Brexit Done”, which was duly achieved without sufficient regard for how leaving the EU would function in practice, certainly not where Northern Ireland is concerned.  

Still, Brexit is in the bag. We’ve had a rude interruption from Covid, but now that is diminishing, attention will focus on that favoured mantra of the prime minister: “levelling up”. 

Same as “Get Brexit Done” went down a storm in the north, “levelling up” is its popular successor, witness the Hartlepool by-election result. But, exactly like its predecessor, no one has much of a clue as to how the words translate into reality.