QUENTIN LETTS: Sir Keir got off to a flier – but then the gravy came off the boil and we were left with the usual congealed mess of formulaic fudge
You can heat cold gravy and for a few minutes it regains life. Then the steam fades and the juices jellify and you are back to where you started: a congealed blob of yesterday’s mess.
Same with Sir Keir Starmer’s desperate bid for political survival. His emergency speech got off to a tremendous start. The old sausage was hot to trot! Well, initially. For a few minutes he was so pumped full of adrenaline that he was almost impressive.
But after a while the urgency passed, the pace slackened, the voice lost its indignation and we were back to the nasal knight of old, prosaic, self-satisfied, a formulaic fudger with little to say.
He had summoned a crowd of about 30 loyal Labour activists to a community centre on London’s Coin Street. Party chairman Anna Turley was in the front row, as was Lucy Powell, deputy leader (whom Sir Keir sacked from the government last year). No other big shots had found a slot in their diaries. Perhaps they weren’t asked.
As congregants gathered for this act of Monday morning worship they could see, through a glass wall, Sir Keir standing in a side room. He was with his press secretary rehearsing his remarks, doing a lot of arm-waving. Odd to do that sort of thing in full view.
He wore a fresh white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. No tie. A clip-on mike. He looked surprisingly perky. The crowd gave him a 15 second ovation, some even whooping, once he reached the lectern after opening remarks from a parliamentary Whip.
Sir Keir started by saying, for the umpteenth time, that last week’s election results were ‘tough, very tough’. This is the word he always uses. He added: ‘I take respunsubulity.’ That was how he pronounced it. Respunsubulity. He said it about eight times.
He spoke of facing ‘dangerous opponents, very dangerous opponents’. He did not specify who they were but it seemed a harsh description of Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivered a major speech on Monday morning, saying last week’s local election results were ‘tough, very tough’
Starmer acknowledged his ‘doubters’ in his speech to a community centre on London’s Coin Street amid challenges to his leadership
Compared to normal Starmer speeches, this one had got off to a flier. There is nothing like personal peril to inject fury into a terminally boring man. He was genuinely indignant to be fighting for his premiership.
Having spoken of decent citizens such as his late brother and his sister, who is a carer, Sir Keir started shouting: ‘I am fighting for them! I am their prime minister! This is their government!’ What he possibly really meant was ‘I am fighting for my neck!’ But we should put away cheap cynicism and at least praise Sir Keir for finally finding a different oratorical gear.
If only it had lasted. After 10 minutes or so the gravy came off the boil and started to solidify. His list of immediate responses to last week’s electoral bog-washing was underwhelming. Steel nationalisation? That felt a bit April 2025. His stuff on Europe was unfocused and dishonest: he claimed our defence depended on the EU, whereas Nato is far more important. The promise to do something about apprenticeships needed to have the mould scraped off it.
‘People are frustrated with me,’ he said. ‘I know I have my doubters.’ Will any of them have their doubts alleviated by this performance? One or two, perhaps briefly. But then they will remember the way he uses dead political language such as ‘incremental change’ and ‘grifter’ and his patronising use of ‘kids’. They will hear him talk of his ‘Pride in Place programme’ and they may groan. They will listen, yet again, to his claims to be working-class, and a peculiar new riff he produced about how his parents died happy because they had helped to create a Britain in which young people had an opportunity, and they will think ‘he’s not quite normal – why on earth would you say something like that?’
And they may think, ‘the selfish swine’s only showing some energy at last because he realises his own job is now on the line’.
