At what point are we supposed to feel sorry for that beleaguered, battered and bruised bureaucrat that has found himself living in 10 Downing Street?
If you’re anything like me, your answer will conjure up a certain Presbyterian from Northern Ireland as you beat your chest and scream: “Never! Never! Never!”
Sir Keir Starmer is about as far from Ian Paisley as a politician can be, having the charisma of tupperware. He deftly combines this with the charm of a traffic warden and the precision of a drunkard swaying over a toilet and failing to hit the bowl.
This is all in violent contrast to the man we were being led to believe had taken over the Labour Party in 2020, when semi-erotic articles fawned over his “forensic” mind.
Shortly after Starmer won the General Election, The Times treated its readers to this headline on a Caitlin Moran article: “Keir Starmer has turbocharged my arousal levels. I feel fruity.”
Therein, Ms Moran gushed that “there is nothing more erotic to a middle-aged woman than competency”. I can only assume that in the last six months arousal levels have plummeted among middle-aged women.
Because cack-handed Keir has so comprehensively cocked up that he can’t even summon the veneer of dull competency on which he previously relied.
Scrapping Winter Fuel Payments to generate a pittance for HMRC. Smearing concerned citizens as far-right like an unfunny reincarnation of Rik Mayall’s The Young Ones character. Sticking up for his own record when the Tories ask for a national inquiry into rape gangs. I could go on, but it’d be too depressing.
There doesn’t appear to be any let-up for the poor PM either. On Thursday, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch eviscerated those most precious of prime ministerial possessions — his policies.
“It’s hard not to feel sorry for the Labour Government,” Badenoch told the Onward think tank, before adding: “But I don’t feel sorry for them.”
Drear Starmer was then told that Labour’s policy on schools amounts to “pure vandalism”. Badenoch pointed out that “for many, the dream of owning a house is impossible.
She also said: “Britain is failing to compete in a world that is changing and it is not working for its citizens.”
It’s difficult to disagree, after the pound hit a 14-month low and the CBI claimed that the UK economy is heading for the “worst of all worlds”.
It looks like British politics might need a new sex symbol.
