Amid all the frenetic changes of leadership in the Conservative party, something important has been overlooked about the Labour party: it also has a new leader. Outwardly nothing has changed. Keir Starmer – he of the slicked-back hair and strangulated vowels – still stands at the despatch box at PMQs each week. But he has been given an electoral personality transplant.
It is not that Starmer has become intrinsically more fluent or exciting (though one cannot fail to notice he has grown somewhat in confidence lately). Rather, it is his entire political persona that has been changed.
Where once he projected the world view of a leftist lawyer from chichi Camden Town – taking a knee for BLM, backing whiney Meghan and Harry, banging on about ‘structural racism’ – now he transmits a pocket Robocop vibe.
On congratulating Rishi Sunak for becoming PM, he noted that it showed Britain was a place where ethnic background was no barrier to reaching the highest office in the land and that was something of which the whole country could be proud.
Last week he eviscerated the Conservatives for failing to stop the Channel boats – a subject he had never dared to lead on before at PMQs.
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