January 19, 2024 - 10:00am
Would you want to get a pint with Keir Starmer? From watching ITV’s Keir Starmer: Up Close on Thursday night, the viewer might come away thinking that this is the most important question to be asked of a prospective prime minister. The programme was so concerned with pinning down “the real Keir Starmer” that it set aside any question of policy or the Labour leader’s plan for power, in favour of scoring him on the normal bloke-ometer. The show’s title prompts the unspoken second half — and Personal. The problem is, you can put a magnifying glass on an ant but it will still scuttle out of view.
Starmer, for those interested in this approach, does come across as fairly normal. He is a political Wife Guy, clearly devoted to Victoria, but also keen to keep his family out of the media glare. His passion for football appears genuine, rather than SpAd-concocted. The closest we get to understanding Starmer’s approach to politics is when he concedes that he has been “ruthless” in moulding Labour in his image and pouring the last dregs of Corbynism down the drain. Yet this speaks more to his pragmatism and desire for power than it does to anything resembling a guiding philosophy.
Anushka Asthana, ITV’s deputy political editor, was given extensive access to the UK’s likely next PM. There he is backstage in Liverpool, warming up to get glitterbombed; there he is walking to the Emirates; a trip to his local pub, an intimate coffee where he talks about his kids. Asthana addresses the camera at the end of the half-hour programme: “After three months of following him, what have we learnt about the real Keir Starmer?” The question is rhetorical, but on the evidence presented last night those three months feel somewhat wasted.
In one of the recorded interviews, Starmer tells Asthana that he holds “no personal animosity” towards his opposite number, Rishi Sunak. But he adds that the two men “wouldn’t be mates” outside of politics, as they come “from totally different worlds”. The distinction he is trying to draw is that Sunak is a Winchester-educated Goldman Sachs alumnus, and that Starmer is — little-known to the wider public — the son of a toolmaker. Sunak would no doubt retort that he is the son of an immigrant pharmacist.
Questioned about the praise he bestowed on Margaret Thatcher last month, the Leader of the Opposition, after some garbling, said that “what she had was clarity of mission, and purpose.” Starmer does have one extremely clear mission, in that he really, really wants to enter Number 10.
One telling scene involved a focus group being asked to describe Starmer in a single word. That you can probably guess the first word to crop up was “boring” reveals much about how we assess our politicians via generic personal descriptions: think Sunak being confronted with a word cloud showing that his public image only really boiled down to being rich. Maybe Starmer is boring; but the media’s obsession with a politician’s personality, or lack thereof, has supplanted interrogation of what said politician plans to do. The ITV programme existed purely for vibes.
There was barely a squeak over the course of the half hour about immigration, and how Starmer might differ his pitch from the Tories’ Rwanda plan, apart from a throwaway line about Britons wanting “control over who comes in and out of the country”. He said something equivocal about wanting to redistribute wealth, but not going too hard on the bankers he’d quite like to win over. Positions on housing and education were dealt with in a single sentence, before we got back to the properly important stuff: so, what were you like at university, Keir?
Starmer evidently doesn’t want a Corbyn-style cult of personality. Going back on manifesto pledges and obfuscating policy stances hasn’t inhibited his route to Downing Street, but if there were viewers who wanted to know what he intends to do for the country, they would have left none the wiser.
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SubscribeLet’s just stop and think about this a moment:
<<But he adds that the two men “wouldn’t be mates” outside of politics, as they come “from totally different worlds”.>>
“So what you’re saying is, you can’t be mates with someone from outside your own group ?”.
Am I alone in finding this strange ? And wondering if such a limited outlook and apparently closed mind is really what we want in a Prime Minister ? Have any other British Prime Ministers carried around such a self-denying ordinance ?
And I thought the bloke believed in diversity.
But beyond that, there’s the question of whether the “different worlds” claim is actually true. And true in the sense that Starmer implied – that he’s the common man. To most people, looking from outside, it’s not obvious that their worlds are that different. Nor that Sir Keir is more in touch with ordinary people than “Mr Sunak”.
For these purposes it doesn’t matter what’s true.
“Different worlds” is just Starmer’s focus-group directed shorthand to reinforce the (entirely correct) public perception that Sunak is exceptionally rich in contrast to the (probably incorrect) perception he’s trying to push of himself as just an ordinary bloke like wot you are.
Of course. I’m sure actually both would probably get on quite well but it’s politics and they need some blue water between each other. I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Churchill and Atlee said some pretty severe things about one another in public, but as now well known they had immense respect for each other too.
I was at school with Sir Keir. It was a home counties grammar school with very strong academic and sporting values: in my year (one ahead of KS) we had the best Oxbridge entrance results in the state sector in the country. In sport, the school was particularly strong in rugby, but also had county and national level cricketers: it was weak at football (it must have been – I turned out for the school a couple of times).
So it didn’t have extensive sports fields, dedicated theatre space, its own swimming pool, or all the other add-ons which no doubt you get at Winchester. But it wasn’t a “totally different world” by any stretch of the imagination.
Quite.
It’s a crazy world where Keir Starmer doesn’t feel able to be more open and honest about what schools like this achieved and instead seeks to diminish them. From what I understand, what was an excellent state school is now a private school. Result. Not.
Rather than interviewing the figurehead we should really be asking the Blob what their plans are for a ‘Starmer Government’.
Rather like their plans for the ‘Sunak Government’ I would guess, still intending to move their power away from democratic interference and oversight.
Apparently early on they’re considering banning use of the ‘Blob’ excuse. It’s known to shrink the neural pathways of those who use it as it shuts down proper reflection and thought. So a Public health initiative.
Oh dear! Banning ‘Blob’? This is such bad news! In keeping with the best traditions of Wokery it was my expectation to ‘clebrate’ (as one has to say these days) Blobism.
I’m devastated….
Wokery celebrating ‘Blobism’. The contortions behind meaningless phraseology I guess just shows what a remarkable language is our English.
Actually, the nearest characterisation of Starmer i can think of would be Mr Blobby.
Wasn’t Henry Ford also a toolmaker?
Is there a real Keir Starmer?
Yes – a suit full of nowt with selective amnesia when it comes to policies and soundbites. His three aims are 1) get elected, 2) er… 3) that’s it.
To be honest I’m surprised that Starmer even agreed to participate in a profile this anodyne.
With the Conservatives constantly at each other’s throats and the public utterly repelled by their venal incompetence, he has very little to gain from appearing in public at all. Just stay at home and catch up on some reading. Sunak and the rest of his party will ensure Labour wins the next election without any outside help.
All Srarmer wants is to become P M. So he can go from being wealthy to very wealthy as Clinton , Obama and his hero Blair all did . Why else would he wish to be P M he must surely know he can’t stop the U K’s decline!
Whereas if you are a Farage you can cut out the middle bit, avoid ever being responsible for anything, and go straight to being v wealthy and a media celebrity.
To be honest I’m surprised that Starmer even agreed to participate in a profile this anodyne.
He’s trying to create a public image as an anodynamo.
There is in reality not a cigarette paper between Sunak and Starmer. The next Labour government will do pretty much the same as the Tories have been doing in recent years, as both are in thrall to the same managerialist, short term, contemptuous world view.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Yes if there is a Labour Govt early on not a great deal will change for sure.
But despite that it’s along way from Tsar Nicholas replaced by a Josef Stalin. George did respond to a perception of ‘managerialism’ in his essay Polemic. Worth a read if interested in his prescience.
Boring will do us for a few years won’t it. Bit less psychodrama and a bit more quiet good governance mightn’t go amiss.
Of course he knows he’s going to get a proper hospital pass from the Right wing clowns, in Government, in Tufton st and in the Right wing media, who’ve led us down a proper cul de sac last 14 years. Few simple quick solutions. But even in that scenario alot can be done with some basic competency both from a leader and from a Party not tearing itself apart.
“Tufton Street” LOL
‘Sir Keir’ likes to emphasise his humble origins. But he went to a selective grammar school which became a private school during his time there He then graduated with bachelor degrees in law from Leeds and Oxford universities (yes, he is an Oxbridge man too!). He cut his legal teeth as a human rights lawyer (yes, he not dissimilar to Anthony Blair (private school, Oxbridge, human rights lawyer, QC, etc.) and was himself appointed a QC. He is undoubtedly a creature of The Establishment, AKA The Woking Class.
“In his teenage years, Starmer was active in Labour politics; he was a member of the Labour Party Young Socialists in East Surrey … From 1986 to 1987, Keir Starmer served as the editor of Socialist Alternatives, a Trotskyist [emphasis mine] radical magazine. The magazine was produced by an organization (sic) under the same name, which represented the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency.” [Wikipedia]
Starmer was appointed to the top civil service position (for which he duly received his knighthood) by the Labour government in 2008. One year after leaving his ‘apolitical’ civil service job, Sir “was selected in December 2014 to be the Labour Party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour UK constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, a safe seat” [Wikipedia]. Only favoured first-time parliamentary candidates are awarded safe seats – so his star must have been well cemented in the top echelons of the Labour Party well before.
“As of 2023, Keir Starmer’s net worth is estimated to be around £5 million.” [Equity Atlas]
We therefore actually know rather a lot about Sir Keir, active in socialist politics from his teenage years. Though not filthy rich like slippery Sunak, he is far wealthier than most of the British electorate to whom he will be appealing in the forthcoming general election. Wouldn’t we all relish owning c.£5 million of assets? Of course, his wealth means that he will be shielded from the consequences of his political decisions should he ascend the steps to 10 Downing Street in 2024.
Same old … whether Tory or Labour …!
He is a nice if dull pompous and entitled Islington human rights lawyer – in totally the wrong job. The real Labour Party beneath him and Plagiarise Rach are mad frothing wolves, currently muzzled and locked up in a dark cage. They will not see the light of day until the Mandy and Bideny ‘We Are Right Wing’ campaigning lies and obfuscations are played out on election day. He and we both know they are a nasty bunch of 100% mediocre public sector leftists who – since the nation laughed at their insane Corbyn Manifesto- are clinging desperately to the core four dark horsemen of modern leftist state progressivism. Class War and Anti Capitalism. Reverse Racism, extreme DEI and CRT. Net Zero, Degrowth and Eco culitism. And anti nation state pro EU Empire internationalism. He is a coward and scoundrel because he knows this truth…but as with his ‘Screw Your Brexit Mandate, lets Vote Again’ political coup…he is happy living this lie. His icky vanity and ambition will therefore lead us deeper into the many horrors (see todays headlines alone for its variety . Islam and schools, Port Talbot, vaxx boycotts, Post Office, Nicola coverups) which are guaranteed under the Progressive Party State. Shame on him.
What do we know ? We know he is a north london lawyer. That his stint as head of the CPS includes some pretty poor sins of both omission and commission. We know his grasp of numbers is poor and economics is worse. His triumph – like Boris Johnson- was beating Corbyn.
As for his strategy – it’s getting power- he appears to have no vision of what to do with it.
The UK will not elect Starmer- they will refuse to elect the Tories. Starmer will win by the Tory default.
There is no economic model which will improve the Uk by importing large numbers of people who cost the state far more than the tax they pay.
Does Starmer understand that ?
All of the hideous notions and ideologies that have flourished under the Tories these last 14 years – net zero, illegal mass immigration, wokeism, BLM, etc – will be double downed on by Starmer and Labour. I’ll give them precisely six months before the public realise they’ve just been royally conned.
In July 2021 Starmer said, (quoted in the Guardian the day after the Batley & Spen byelection victory) – “The values of Kim’s campaign won through – decency, honesty and integrity. Those are the values that define the Labour party that I lead”.
At the time I thought he’s going to have his work cut out judging by many of the Labour supporters posting comments on the Guardian website, such as those about him gerrymandering the Labour Party’s voting system, being an anachronism, a centrist, a Blairite in a post-Blair world, an establishment stooge, a puppet of Mandelson, having no political intelligence, and so on.
I still think he risks the the Corbynista rearguard, even now, dashing his ambition to live in 10 Downing Street.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/02/keir-starmer-hails-kim-leadbeater-as-the-future-of-labour