First, a little story. About three years ago I was given an eccentric but fun assignment between Covid lockdowns – I had to eat my way around the coast of East Anglia. On my gluttonous travels I met an extremely senior retired judge – whose wife now owns a posh boutique hotel in Suffolk. As we ate asparagus and hollandaise in his lovely, sun-dappled garden the amiable ex-beak told me that of all the lawyers who’d ever come before him, Keir Starmer was ‘the cleverest’.
This matters because the banality – the lack of ideas, interest, freshness – extends to the content of the speech, not just the tone and prose
I confess this heartened me as, even back then, it seemed Sir Keir Starmer might become PM, given the Tory government’s hapless yet spendy reaction to the pandemic (and much else). However, I also had slight doubts about this personal verdict as the retired judge was – as he told me – an ardent Remainer. I wondered, vaguely, if this was warping his assessment of the ultra-Remainer Sir Beer Korma. I decided to see the bright side, and hope for the best – as you do during a global plague, because that is the only way to survive, psychologically.
Since then the evidence has been mixed. I’ve heard from friends of colleagues that Starmer is astute, hard-working, resourceful. But there have also been negative indicators, and in the last weeks since the election these warning signals have multiplied. I’m now halfway convinced that Starmer is both odd and banal, and banality in particular is not good.
The oddness came across best in a peculiar interview he gave to the Guardian just a fortnight before the 2024 election. In this interview Starmer makes several bizarre admissions, sometimes inadvertently. He confesses he has no favourite poems or novels. Really? Not one? Surely even the most technocratic of managers has a favourite Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl from his childhood? Or is Starmer scared of citing anything (Dahl is racist!) as it might be seized as wrongthink?
And it’s not just the lack of literary interests. In this same article it is revealed that Starmer cannot think on his feet, cannot say if he’s an optimist, pessimist, extrovert, or introvert (‘I’ve never really thought about it’), cannot describe the colour of his own tie, talks about himself in the third person, and cannot deal easily with criticism (one brilliant line: ‘when stressed, he has a face like a slammed front door’). Also, he never ever dreams. Taken together, this is indeed odd, it is also reveals a profound absence of imagination, and a weird lack of – or aversion to – self awareness.
On the other hand, this same interview reveals a genuinely decent family guy, a man who obviously loves his wife and kids, a working-class boy with a pretty tough background (his mother was often ill), who nonetheless toiled his way to the top of the legal system. And he still found time to do pro bono. So maybe the eerie boring-ness doesn’t matter? If he is intelligent and dutiful?
I think it does matter because like quite a few Britons I watched Starmer give his No. 10 rose garden speech yesterday. In many ways this was Starmer’s keynote speech to the nation, setting the tone for his whole premiership. And it was catastrophic.
Part of the calamity was, yes, the banality of the prose. For instance, he used the awkward buzz-phrase ‘big ask’ five times. Once is wince-worthy, five times risks a cosmic singularity of mortal embarrassment, imploding the solar system. Here they are, brace yourself, and shield your major organs:
‘During those recent riots, I made huge asks…’
‘I was making big asks of them…’
‘To shake the hands of the first responders who rose up to the ask I was making of them.’
‘Make big asks of you as well…’
‘That is a really big ask…’
I did warn you.
Now, you could argue, once again, that it doesn’t matter that the English prose is tiresomely dull, lacklustre, humourless, insipid, and banal, and yet it was still approved by the PM. It doesn’t matter that Starmer comes across as a human resources middle manager forcing you to listen to his excruciating bullet points. It doesn’t matter that he resembles a nervous, inadequate supply teacher who tries to compensate by being overly stern.
But it does matter because the banality – the lack of ideas, interest, freshness – extends to the content of the speech, not just the tone and prose. For example, not once does Starmer mention immigration, legal or illegal, let alone any new ideas on the issue. He spends several hours – or so it felt – righteously condemning the riots (and yes, of course, the riots were awful), but he never goes near the obvious context.
This does everyone a disservice. Because polls show that this subject – immigration – is now at the top of voter concerns. And voters are right to be anxious, not least for reasons of finance. Take the hoo-ha over the withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Payment (which Starmer does mention, with defiant pride). It is estimated that this will save the government £1.4 billion a year. Meanwhile, housing several thousand asylum seekers (with thousands more arriving every month, and no plan to solve the issue) costs us £4 billion, every year, and rising.
This then, is the problem of Starmer’s banality. He is, to use the dictionary.com definition of banal: ‘devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite.’ This means he will have no ideas what to do about our problems, he will just mumble meaningless buzz-words, for five long years. Even worse, his premiership might fulfil the Collins Dictionary definition of banal, something ‘so ordinary that it is not at all effective.’ He won’t even be effective.
Of course, it is early days. And part of me still harbours the poignant hope I had in that sunny Suffolk garden, in the summer of 2020. Britain really needs an effective prime minister, and some fresh ideas, we really need somebody un-banal.
And yet as autumn hurtles towards us, with winter right behind, I feel gloominess encroaching. And last time I looked, I am not alone. A recent poll from More in Common shows that Starmer’s ‘popularity’ has plunged by 27 points in just two months. A nearly unprecedented decline, leaving him on minus 16. That is not banal, that is interesting, and new, and ominous.
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