Is nomenclature destiny? If Keir Starmer had not been named for Keir Hardie, the founding father of the Labour party, but rather had his middle name ‘Rodney’ as his first, would he have still gone for the job as Labour leader? Might he have continued rather in the highly remunerative law career which made him Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013? Instead he became an MP in 2015, leader of the Labour party in 2020 and – if he doesn’t start killing kittens while tittering on TikTok in the interim – next prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2024.
But there’s just something which doesn’t yell ‘Venceremos!’ about the man otherwise known as Captain Hindsight, Sir Shifty and (Boris, on fine Beano form) ‘Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest’. Is it the robotic aspect? He often has what I call Resting Glitch Face, like something’s not computing; that ‘uncanny valley’ feeling, or as Gertrude Stein said of her childhood hometown: ‘There’s no ‘there’ there.’
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