‘Make Britain Serious Again’
“Make Britain Serious Again”
Who would’ve thought that could be the slogan for the next five years of life in Britain, barring “a flabbergasting reversal” of the political winds of change?
Keir Starmer, that’s who.
The Labour Party leader and Britain’s next prime minister – if the opinion polls ahead of the July 4 general election are to be believed – offered his slogan of prosaic stability and “ordinary hope, realistic hope” to the Financial Times’s deputy political editor Jim Pickard.
Seemingly, he did so without a self-deprecating smile.
Is that very Keir Starmer?
A pretty unsmiling, straight sort of dude?
The interview (paywall) – conducted by Mr Pickard over two train journeys and a rushed, seemingly joyless, ultimately interrupted café lunch – suggests that Mr Starmer is really dead serious about wanting Britain to become serious again.
As the piece notes: “Starmer is quite good-humoured but never frivolous. When I ask him who he would push off a cliff — Nigel Farage, Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Corbyn — he sighs. ‘I hate these quick-fire questions, they are a bugbear to me. You can’t reduce everything to yes/no answers’.”
Sure. But…how about saying “none”? With a wry smile?
