BORIS Johnson is “well”, Downing Street has insisted after the Prime Minister delivered a bizarre rambling about Peppa Pig World during a speech to the CBI conference.
In an address which was supposed to focus on green growth and include policy announcements, Johnson instead made headlines by announcing the cartoon character theme park was his kind of place, comparing himself to Moses and impersonating a car engine revving.
READ MORE: Ruth Davidson attacks Boris Johnson over 'disrespectful' CBI speech
Journalists asked the Prime Minister after the 20-minute speech whether he was doing okay, but he was insistent that he got his points across well.
On Tuesday afternoon, Downing Street intervened. “The Prime Minister is well. The Prime Minister is very much focused on delivering for the public. He briefly lost his place in a speech,” a spokesperson said.
“He has given hundreds of speeches," he went on. "I don’t think it’s unusual for people on rare occasions to lose their place in a speech.”
The spokesman would not be drawn on “anonymous source quotes” about Johnson’s performance on Downing Street.
He said: “The Prime Minister, as you have seen from Cabinet, is focused on the issues that we face as we come up to the winter months and delivering on important changes like social care.”
Asked whether Johnson had a core group of ministers around him to offer advice, the spokesman said: “The Prime Minister has an entire Cabinet to draw on who provide advice, as you would expect.”
The spokesman said he “wants people to be able to speak freely and give their views” around the Cabinet table.
The speech to business leaders did not go down well within Johnson's own party, especially after weeks of Tory sleaze headlines dominating the news agenda.
Senior Tory Jeremy Hunt said it had “not been a great month” for the Government, “not just on trivial issues like speeches going wrong but on much more serious issues like parliamentary standards”.
In a sign of the questions being asked about Johnson, a senior Downing Street source told the BBC “there is a lot of concern inside the building about the PM ... It’s just not working”.
“Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes otherwise it’ll keep getting worse. If they don’t insist, he just won’t do anything about it,” the source said.
Hunt acknowledged there were “noises off” about Johnson’s leadership within the Tory party, but insisted the criticism was not on the same scale as that faced by David Cameron or Theresa May.
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