Not much of a choice.

Inspired (if that’s the best word) by the cover article in today’s Times Magazine. I haven’t actually read it. I don’t need to. It doesn’t matter.

Who is the real Keir Starmer? Who is the real Keir Starmer? Who is the real Keir Starmer? Who is the real Keir Starmer? Who really cares? Who really cares? Who really cares? Who really cares? I couldn’t really care less who Keir Starmer is, but it does niggle me a little bit that he is the man who has styled himself to be the next political leader of this country, and yet he seems wholly unsuited to the job; which, interestingly enough, is the sole qualification shared by all our political elite. That question: who is the real Keir Starmer? is all every newspaper and magazine article ever seems to ask. They keep asking and then they ask some more and it’s not as if people haven’t tried to answer, including Sir Keir himself, and yet no-one can ever seem to put their finger on something that feels like a remotely adequate response; something that can settle the nerves and bring clarity from confusion. I may not instinctively dislike him but neither do I instinctively care about Keir Starmer, because I don’t care what he thinks, let alone what he can do; or more importantly what he can’t do. And I don’t think he’ll be able to do much at all, for me or for anyone else. That at least puts him in good company, down at the House of Commons.

Starmer is often sold off onto undecided voters as a safe pair of hands. Honest. From a working class background (I’m never quite sure how much that matters once you get to the top). Dependable. Functional. Uninspiring yet practical. Like a cheap butter knife. In the last few years he’s tried to come across as some sort of political Eliot Ness, sworn to root out corruption and bring Chicago back under a steady tiller. Only we’re not in Chicago, we’re in a stinking, low tide, sewage outlet kind of Britain; a Britain that is just about as sunken and desperate as at any time since I was born. Depending on your personal taste you can spend all day ranting about how Thatcher failed or how Blair failed or how Cameron turned it all to shit on the spin of a coin, but nothing compares to just how grotty our politics have turned out to be today – a useless Prime Minister who knows he can wriggle out at a moments notice and roll around in his wife’s money for the rest of his life is hardly who you’d call the man for the job. And let’s face it, even if he was really good he would never have been able to turn around the galactic failures that preceded him – specifically Truss and Johnson, two blondes that will forever be two thirds of the least appealing threesome in history. The point being that all Starmer has to do is fail, and surely he can’t do that. Can he?

Starmer seems to get quite tetchy when he is accused of being boring. He gets tetchy because he knows deep down in his magnolia soul that he is the textbook definition of a boring human being. It’s not an insult, strictly speaking, more of an observation, but when millions are correctly making the very same observation it doesn’t really help. Bizarrely he also doesn’t like the idea that he isn’t dynamic and exciting and, dare I say it, a smidge on the sexy side. And that’s because he is none of those things. Whenever he opens his mouth, literally whenever, to say anything at all, on any topic, time seems to tighten up and the air becomes dry and barren of life. Where he needs pace and punch and authority he just sounds like he’s decided to stop a wild hen party to discuss fish consumption data from French Guyana. His policies are becoming muddled already, his conviction is compromised and his message sounds like a struggling fridge. To put it simply, Keir Starmer has survived this far as a political leader for one reason only: he isn’t a Conservative Prime Minister. And that, ladies and gentleman, is some pretty slim pickings.

At some point this year we’ll have a general election. I genuinely can’t remember the last time a general election got me interested. They should be about winners and subtle charisma and change and positivity, but on the whole they turn out to be about who’s the smallest loser, a toss up between better-the-devil-you-know and I’d-rather-have-them-than-the-devil. It’s become like a much more dangerous version of The Apprentice, where the contestants are actually intelligent but can’t help but make stupendously thick decisions which have real implications on actual people, as opposed to Sir Alan Sugar’s bank account. We’ll see politicians bitch and moan and jostle and brown nose as if their lives (not just their careers) depend on it and the river Thames choke under a viscous stream of failed ambitions, empty rhetoric and promises broken before they have even been properly made. Everybody knows that no other party will get a look in. Either Rishi will pull the Tories back from Westminster’s biggest suicide pact or enough people will get over Keir Starmer’s utter inability to be interesting and just vote for what they might hope is that very mundane safer pair of hands. And then when (less so if) he screws it all up we’ll have feisty, northern, working mum Angela Rayner, who has the potential to be a lot more dangerous. She’d probably see that as a compliment, but that’s the problem with British politics in 2024: too much ego, too much bile and not enough talent. And not a soul worth voting for on their own merits. What a sad, sad shame. Who is the real Keir Starmer? It really doesn’t matter, as far as I can see.

G B Burton. 17.02.2024