Johnson on the back foot in New York

If Boris Johnson had a little more self-awareness he might have reshuffled himself last week. The trip to the United Nations general assembly in New York on Monday was supposed to be the fun part of the job. A chance for the prime minister to do the things he liked best. Rubbing shoulders and making crap gags with other world leaders, while his juniors were left back home trying to maintain the energy supply and offer vague reassurances that Christmas would not be cancelled.

Yet instead he found himself repeatedly on the back foot, sounding as downbeat as all those ministers he had sacked for not showing enough mindless, Tiggerish enthusiasm.

To make matters worse, most of the damage had been self-inflicted. Trying to drum up global support for the Cop26 summit by reminding everyone he had written several articles 20 years ago that had been sceptical of climate change hadn’t been the brightest idea he had ever had. It just made him look like the untrustworthy chancer most people thought him to be.

Nor had his excuse that when the facts changed, he changed, helped greatly. No one could remember the facts about climate science having changed that much over the last two decades.

After that, things had gone steadily downhill. First he had admitted there was only a 60% chance of getting countries to stump up £100bn a year to help poorer countries fight climate change; then he had effectively admitted that the UK was at the back of the queue for a trade deal with the US. Having previously insisted that the UK would have a trade deal with the US in next to no time, and that those who claimed otherwise were in the grip of Project Fear. This was the kind of careless talk that cost other people their jobs.

Yesterday didn’t start a great deal better, with a short interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s Today programme. Boris had wanted to focus on climate change – apparently Joe Biden was so on board with cutting carbon dioxide production that UK meat production was now under threat – but Guthrie mainly wanted to talk about Afghanistan.

How had the prime minister felt about the chaotic scenes in Kabul during the withdrawal of US troops? Johnson’s attempts at diplomacy just made him look out of the loop as he tried to maintain that the evacuation of Afghanistan had been a logistical success. Guthrie looked amazed. No one had told her she was dealing with a halfwit. God knows what a failure would have looked like.

The interview ended with Boris fessing up – for the first time – that he had six children. Or, to be strictly accurate, that he has at least six children that he is prepared to acknowledge, with another being on the way.

He didn’t say whether there might be yet more that he had forgotten about. Or if he could remember all their names.

The interview ended with Boris fessing up – for the first time – that he had six children