Build a team to do the hard graft, then let Boris be Boris and watch the fun at No 10

Why do most prime ministers fail? If you look at the last few premierships — Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and now May — most have ended in disappointment and rancour. How can Boris Johnson avoid the same fate? It isn’t hard to work out what has gone wrong. The qualities and enthusiasms that brought these individuals to Downing Street are not the ones they exhibited once they were in office.

When the famous Number 10 black door closes on them after they return from Buckingham Palace, they become mangled in the machine. One of their first acts is to write the letter to the captains of nuclear submarines about their instructions in the event of nuclear war. From that moment on, it’s all secrecy, detail, rigour and gloom. It will drive Boris bonkers.

There is a different way. Rather than letting himself get moulded by the machine, he needs to rework the machine in his own image. Boris has a famously low boredom threshold. So too did many of our most successful prime ministers in the 18th and 19th centuries, like Walpole and Palmerston. Boris has five great enthusiasms in life, and if he is to become the success he could be, he should pivot every aspect of his premiership around them.

One detail to get out of the way first: he needs to appoint a deputy prime minister who will do much of the hard graft for him. There is so much that the prime minister traditionally does — and which Theresa May did with dutiful stoicism — that he doesn’t have to do, but which a very capable, Rolls-Royce deputy can. Two-thirds of the material that hits the PM’s in-tray daily can be directed to them, as can chairing many committees and meetings.

Boris needs a top civil servant who is a capacious and radical thinker who will shake up the civil service in London and across the country. Mark Sedwill, the incumbent, is exactly that figure. His mind is on the big picture, as it will need to be. In Number 10 itself, Boris needs two chiefs of staff, one for domestic and parliamentary matters, one for foreign policy and Europe. The rest he can leave to the brilliant officials in Downing Street, the best in the world.

Now to his five enthusiasms. First: the United Kingdom. Boris is a patriot. Britain is the world’s number-one soft power. He needs to champion all that is best about Britain, our language, arts, sport and culture. We have the foremost education and health systems in the world — he should help us export them across the globe. Our creative industries need his advocacy.

Second, the arts: Boris’s Number 10 needs to throb with the arts, as it hasn’t done since Edward Heath was prime minister (1970-74). The Royal Shakespeare Company, the greatest in the world, needs to perform regularly in the building, as should our top musicians, dancers and writers, because if people at the heart of Whitehall don’t imbibe culture, they won’t be promulgating it to others. The idea of holding a Festival of Britain in 2021 needs Boris’s energy if a success is to be made of it. Post-Brexit, it needs to be the rallying cry and morale booster from St Ives to Stromness, from Londonderry to Lowestoft.

Thirdly, Boris is an intellectual. They are rare among PMs. Gordon Brown was one, as was A J Balfour at the beginning of the 20th century. Boris should write a book a year to keep his mind engaged and active. We need good single-volume biographies on Margaret Thatcher and Benjamin Disraeli: he would learn more about being PM from writing these rather than reading endless official papers.

He needs to remind the country that we have the best universities in the world. Schools have been sucked of scholarships and the arts and have become dour temples to exam regimentation rather than places of learning and creativity. Bring back sparkle into our schools (and more money), Boris!

Fourth, fun. Boris will be the most fun prime minister since Harold Wilson. We need that quality back into the heart of the nation and recognise that quality of life matters as much as economic statistics. We need to address the poverty and inequality of well-being alongside the inequality of income, especially for our young people, who are increasingly sad, unavoidably so. Boris should shake up Whitehall and appoint a minister for happiness. Boris needs to make the NHS a national wellness service rather than a national illness service, helping shift the focus to living good, meaningful and healthy lives.

Finally, Boris loves beauty. He should support those like Prince Charles, who have for years called for good taste in physical buildings. Britain has some of the most beautiful cities, villages and countryside in the world, but they need protecting and revivifying. Reinstating a new form of national service for the young to help repair and restore our communal life, our beaches, canals and countryside could be Boris projects.

Boris is a big man who doesn’t bear grudges. He should have a broad-based government of all talents. Once Brexit is resolved, there’ll be long overdue challenges to solve. Let’s have optimistic fresh faces to tackle them. May, like Cameron, was hampered by too many lacklustre, limp and leaky ministers.

Boris has one chance to get this right. D-Day supremo Eisenhower was one of the better US presidents. So too was Ronald Reagan in the Eighties. Both left much of the graft to others. So too must Boris. We must let Boris be Boris — and watch the fun begin.

• Anthony Seldon is vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham