Keir Starmer puts Jeremy Corbyn and Ministers to shame – Bill Carmichael

SO is there some life left in the Labour Party yet?
Sir Keir Starmer made his debut at PMQs this week as Labour leader.Sir Keir Starmer made his debut at PMQs this week as Labour leader.
Sir Keir Starmer made his debut at PMQs this week as Labour leader.
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To be honest after five years of the Corbyn Cult, the seizure of the party’s levers of power by extreme left and anti-Semites, the debacle of the worst election result in 85 years, the vicious ferrets-in-a-sack infighting since December and the stupefyingly dull leadership election, I would normally have said ‘not a chance’.

Barring any remarkable transformation in the political landscape, Labour are at least five years away from any reasonable shot at power, and there is little sign that many members have learned any lessons at all from the dismal failure of yet another experiment in fashionable identity politics.

The surreal scene in the commons during Prime Minister's Questions.The surreal scene in the commons during Prime Minister's Questions.
The surreal scene in the commons during Prime Minister's Questions.
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Meanwhile, Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party’s poll ratings are heading steadily into the stratosphere – well north of 50 per cent according to many polls – remarkably so as it is happening during the worst political crisis in recent memory, and also at a time when there is widespread criticism of the Government’s handling of the pandemic response.

But this week we witnessed the faintest glimmer of hope for Labour supporters in the shape the new leader Sir Keir Starmer, who used Prime Minister’s Question Time to remind the country what the job of Leader of the Opposition is supposed to entail.

Starmer was calm, reasonable, ferociously well-briefed, quietly confident and with none of the flashes of irrational anger and partisan nastiness that characterised these exchanges under the Magic Grandpa.

Labour’s new leader, educated at Leeds University let us not forget, so perhaps we can claim him as an honorary Yorkshireman, is also intelligent enough to think on his feet without the need of repeating the same things over and again from a pre-prepared script. Crucially he also seemed to understand instinctively that now is not the time for scoring cheap points.

Sir Keir Starmer is the new Labour leader.Sir Keir Starmer is the new Labour leader.
Sir Keir Starmer is the new Labour leader.
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Instead, with forensic precision that befits a former lawyer, he laid out a strong case against the Government by pressing repeatedly his opposite number – Dominic Raab in the absence of Johnson – over the numbers of people being tested, the supply of protective equipment and the death rate among health staff and home care workers. Precisely the questions the public want answering.

There was a telling point during the exchanges when Raab admitted he had no numbers as yet for the deaths of care workers because of the way the statistics were compiled, and Starmer’s immediate comeback was to forewarn him that he would ask the same question every week until the figures were supplied.

Even in a Commons chamber largely empty because of social distancing rules, and without the juvenile baying that usually accompanies these exchanges from our supposed betters, that one hit the bullseye with a resounding thud.

Surely, I wasn’t the only one to look up with surprise from my laptop and think: “Ooh! That’s what holding the Government to account is supposed to be about. I’d honestly forgotten what that was like.”

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The warning for Conservative ministers was as clear as a bell. They are going to have to raise their game. The adolescent, student union posturing from the Labour front bench is finally over. The adults are back in charge of this once great party.

For the first time in years Labour actually looked hungry for power, instead of shouting meaningless, futile slogans through a megaphone on the side-lines, which the middle-class Corbynistas will carry on doing quite happily for the rest of their lives.

And with a bit of imagination you could envisage Starmer delivering a victory speech on the steps of Number 10 – something you could never say in a month of Sundays of his shambling predecessor.

And I say hurrah for that. We need a strong and capable opposition. Labour is going to have travel a long way before they can again claim my vote – which I unthinkingly and tribally offered in my younger years. In that I am not dissimilar to many working class voters in the north of England, I suspect.

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But that doesn’t mean I wish this great party ill. In fact I desperately hope it once again begins to challenge the Conservatives as a serious alternative government. So good luck to you Sir Keir, well done for your performance this week and more power to your elbow.

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