The PM has not been open with his citizens for fear of backlash from Washington. This crisis demands he speak directly to the country

Boris Johnson is an unlikely role model for Keir Starmer. The Etonian bluffer and the stolid lawyer could hardly be more different, but there’s one thing the former prime minister got right. Five years ago this week, Johnson spoke to the country in a direct, televised address that conveyed the seriousness of the threat Britons faced and steeled them for the pain to come. Now Starmer needs to do the same, not because there is a pandemic on the way – but because Donald Trump is already here.

That six-minute video message of Johnson’s was transformative. It signalled that we had entered a period of emergency in which almost everything we had taken for granted – including basic human liberties – would no longer apply. “Stay at home,” he said and, with few exceptions, we did. Johnson framed the sacrifice as an act of patriotism, implicitly drawing on memories of blitz-spirit solidarity: “I know that as they have in the past … the people of this country will rise to that challenge.” They did. Hence the fury when it emerged that Johnson and his circle had not themselves made the sacrifices that they had demanded of everyone else, a fury that drove him and eventually his party from power. But it all began with that TV address.