Keir Starmer is bland, stable, boring – he should have gone a long way |
Keir Starmer is bland, stable, staid – or any other euphemism you can summon for “boring”. His personality is devoid of imagination, wit, flair or “authenticity”. And what about that grating voice? Thanks to Starmer, the British public has learned what “adenoidal” means. These are just some of the nicer things the Westminster media has to say about its sad, downtrodden, beleaguered, put-upon, useless (ouch) prime minister.
I prefer the assessment of one Financial Times commentator: isn’t it nice for Britain to have a leader who doesn’t “behave like a gibbon” on the world stage? That is nice, actually, but evidently insufficient for the Labour parliamentary party, and more importantly, the public.
After a predicted wash out in the local elections – an insurgent Green Party encroaches from the left, as Nigel Farage continues to march in from the right – Starmer is, and we must be bored with hearing this by now, more precarious than ever. (I remember when the winter fuel payment debacle of August 2024 made the recently elected PM “more precarious than ever”.)
I am sceptical, however, that Starmer deserves all this blame, laid so squarely at his feet and his feet only. We can lay out the superficial facts: he has polled since last year as the least popular leader since records began. In this week of manoeuvring, positioning and........