The true cause of the public’s anger

What Keir Starmer should have said, but didn’t, was that he had indeed drunk some beer in a frowsy Labour party constituency office, but that he had not remotely enjoyed it. This would have had the advantage of being true, for a start: even through the blurred window you can see the Labour leader’s face etched in misery as he shares a comradely pint with some typical party activists — Roz Harridan, Loretta (formerly Dave) Spart and bum-fluff Oli from the youth wing — in Durham. Thing is, I remember having drinks with comrades when I was in the Labour party and they were never much fun, just tiresome evenings in which everyone tried to out-pious each other. No ribald jokes (such as ‘Why did the feminist cross the road? – Because I told her to’), no laddish banter and don’t even think about trying to pull a chick.

It is not really on to have a good time if you are a Labour member. How can you, when Palestine is still under the jackboot of Zionist oppression and Tory scum are murdering pensioners? And then there is the disposition of Sir Keir himself who seems to find all manifestations of humanity, such as having a drink with friends, a fraught and painful business to be undertaken only when absolutely necessary, an obstacle course which one can enjoy only once it has been successfully completed. So, that’s what he should have said — ‘I drank some beer but hated every minute of it’ — and we might have had some sympathy.

Instead the idiot did exactly what Boris had done and insisted he hadn’t broken any rules, technically. This doesn’t work as a defence, because no matter what the technicalities, the public has a memory of May 2020 and drinking beer with friends was definitely not part of it.