Keir Starmer should pull his punches against Boris Johnson

The luxuriantly coiffured soft left Labourite Keir Starmer may, at first glance, appear to have almost nothing in common with the balding Thatcherite Tory Iain Duncan Smith. In fact, when he wins the Labour leadership contest this weekend, as he surely will, he faces a political challenge that is similar to the one IDS accepted when he became Leader of the Opposition on September 13, 2001.

IDS arrived at the summit of his party at a moment of profound international crisis, just as an incumbent premier with a prodigious gift for communication was judged by the British public to be rising magnificently to the occasion. The public immediately understood then that the terror attacks of September 11 constituted an epoch-shifting event for the world, just as they understand the same now about the global pandemic of coronavirus, also known (by the most powerful man in the world) as ‘the China virus’.