Flip-flop Starmer has been unmasked

A lot of politicians go through phases with phrases – falling back on buzzwords and self-coined instant cliches when seeking to set out a thought to interviewers or people that they meet. Often this becomes the subject of private jokes between their spin doctors – with sneaky glances and wry smiles greeting the umpteenth rolling out of the latest favoured soundbite.

Keir Starmer has a classic just now, a belter of a mixed metaphor to boot. He cannot wait, he tells people, ‘to take off the mask and open the throttle’. The saying has such an irresistible air of Accidental Partridge that I’d be surprised were it not to have been the cause of some hilarity among backroom staff.

Setting throttles aside, it is telling that the Labour leader has alighted on this image of himself as a masked and therefore muffled man, deprived by the Covid crisis of the chance properly to convey his authentic self.