Starmer needs more than just competence

Keir Starmer went back to what he most enjoys at Prime Minister’s Questions: calling the government incompetent and demanding that it ‘get a grip’, especially over Covid. Let’s face it, he’s hardly short of material given all the let downs and U-turns that the PM has inflicted on the nation. He swiftly reduced Boris Johnson to the cringeworthy tactic of claiming that criticism of him amounted to an attempt to ‘deprecate the efforts of NHS track and trace’.

But more significant than Starmer’s deployment of his relentless boxer’s jab about competence today was what he did yesterday. In a series of television interviews, the Labour leader very publicly embraced Brexit. Millions of voters across multiple channels will have seen him deliver a key message to camera: ‘The Leave-Remain argument is over’. Starmer won’t hold another referendum on the matter and is not in favour of extending the transition period to grant more time for negotiations.