This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

The old adage that ‘sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never harm you’ is only partly true.

Certainly a quick swipe to the head with a cricket bat or a brick will definitely put you in hospital – if not the morgue. However, for a leader, a well placed insult can be politically fatal, as Keir Starmer, and his wife Victoria, are finding out.

Jibes like ‘Sir Keir Scrounger’, and 'Lady Victoria Sponger’ (which is rather brilliant), stick for life. ‘Thatcher Milk-Snatcher’ is still remembered. ‘Crooked Hillary’ helped Trump into the White House – along with the Russians, of course. I have to confess my favourite dig at Starmer is ‘Johnny Free-Trousers’. It’s just perfect – both comic and devastating.

Starmer is a millionaire who got a multi-millionaire – and a Labour donor, of course, in receipt of a Downing Street pass – to buy clothes for him and his wife.

There’s something so disgustingly venal about this that it’s hard to see how Starmer's reputation ever recovers. Starmer took more than £100,000 in freebies over the life of the last parliament. Apparently, going to Taylor Swift’s concert was “part of the job” – so said one of Starmer’s pitiful cabinet ministers sent out to defend him.

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Starmer has the brass neck to defend his free box at Arsenal on security grounds. Clearly, the notion of just not going hasn’t even crossed his mind. Let’s see how that plays out in the debate over the introduction of a........

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