The non-story of the weekend must be the election of the oily Keir Starmer, sorry SIR Keir Starmer, as the new leader of the Labour Party. Starmer is one of those greasy characters who seems to have risen to the top of his chosen profession almost without being noticed. Does anyone actually know what his true beliefs are ?
A lawyer by profession, Starmer has been active in local politics for many years and obviously had enough connections to get himself appointed as Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008 when Gordon Brown was performing as the countries then worst Prime Minister on record. For such an appointment to be given to a man of clear and heavily biased political views was itself questionable, but for him to emerge after 5 years and be a Member of Parliament in an ultra-safe seat within less than 2 more is astonishing. For him now to be leading his party leaves me speechless.
That said, his opponents in the leadership election were not exactly top drawer and his election was almost a foregone conclusion. His approach of talking a lot while saying very little and committing himself to even less, is that adopted by most of those who reach high public office; his comments about the government's approach to the COVID-19 crisis are a typical mixture of criticism and apparent support, but it's clear that he will use the current emergency for his own party political advantage as much as he can.
Starmer is not a fanatic like Jeremy Corbyn, nor is he a loser like Ed Miliband; he is probably more adept than Gordon Brown. He seems to me to be most like Tony Blair, a man who will ride roughshod over all opposition while climbing the greasy pole as fast as he can, using whatever he can grab hold of on the way.
A few weeks ago, the prospect of a Labour victory in the next general election was a distant possibility, but COVID-19 has changed all that. If the government doesn't succeed in dealing with the epidemic quickly and with minimal disruption, Starmer could well be Prime Minister in 2024, leading a party obsessed with equality, human rights and getting the UK back into the European Union.
God help us if he is.
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