It’s possible, though not popular, to feel a bat-squeak of sympathy for Sir Keir Starmer on a human level these days. It can’t be much fun being him.

It’s also possible, though not popular, to hold in your head at the same time the ideas that a) he’s been a pretty useless Prime Minister and b) he isn’t an actual monster. He has, where he has made any decisions, made terrible decisions. He has led from the back, thrown his colleagues merrily under a whole succession of Number 37s when things have gone wrong, switched tack at the first whiff of cordite, been serially economical with the truth and stubborn in his refusal to recognise reality. None of this redounds to his credit.

Is this loathing, we should ask, strictly proportionate? Is it, y’know, sane?

Is this loathing, we should ask, strictly proportionate? Is it, y’know, sane?

But he isn’t just disliked or disapproved of. He is actively, fiercely, loathed. Even what you’d think would be an unobjectionable social media post yesterday, calling a violent anti-Muslim attack on the streets of Edinburgh “absolutely appalling” and making the surely uncontroversial assertion that “no one should face violence on our streets” was swarmed with spite.

“F**k off you racist anti white Muslim loving c**t,” was one of the top responses on X. (Good with four-letter words; bad with hyphens.........

© The Spectator