David Marsden

Keir Starmer is a walking, talking political identity crisis. Starmer is a man - at least we assume that’s what he is. We have not verified his biological sex. We see him using the men’s toilets (at least that’s what I assume) and playing football with other people who appear to be (unverified) men. Ok, let’s put it this way. Starmer is an unverified man, or at least, appears to self-identify as a man. I tell you what, for the sake of clarity, I’m just going to refer to him - or them - as a person.

Starmer is a person who lied to Labour Party members to win their votes to become the elected leader of the Labour Party. He made a series of pledges to enact socialist, progressive policies. All of which he’s reneged on. As leader of the Opposition to the murderous, racist liar Boris Johnson, Starmer went out of his way to consistently support the Tory government.

His entire strategy was to remove any possibility of mistaking him for a Labour leader, and one former Labour leader in particular. If anything he was even more right wing than Johnson. Crucially, he had no responsibilities and therefore appeared more competent and professional than Johnson. Having established himself as a Tory clone, Starmer was able to position himself as the “change” candidate against the dripping wet washout Rishi “carry on” Sunak. It was no contest. Starmer won by a landslide and had a mandate to do exactly as he was told by his advisers/handlers.

I see people complaining now that Starmer has no policies, no principles, no political beliefs. Yet his entire career, and certainly his entire election campaign, was built solely on the pursuit of power. Pledges, promises, missions, principles, beliefs - they’re all for losers, people who identify as something or other. Starmer’s handlers positioned him as a nobody. A no-one. Someone no one could possibly identify with. Someone who could win votes from Tories in Tory seats dressing to the right, from Labour voters in Labour seats dressing to the left, and from Liberal voters in liberal seats dressing to the right again but this time wearing orange underpants. Hell, he even won votes from Scottish Nationalists wearing a tartan dress and no knickers.

It was an amazing and amazingly brilliant election-winning strategy. But it does mean that we have a Prime Minister who panders to the electoral threat from the right. It does mean we have a PM who is obsessed with people’s genitals, and whether they had them at birth. And it does mean that we have a leader who eats three Shredded wheat for breakfast every morning just to look tough for Reform voters even though he has a severe gluten intolerance. Hence Starmer’s persistent strained facial expression and his whiny voice.