There was a delay to Sir Keir Starmer’s press conference on the war. Perhaps there had been some late-breaking development. No. Reporters were told the prime minister simply needed ‘more time to rehearse’.
When he arrived in the Downing Street press suite his head was down. He took the few steps to the lectern at a trudge. Was he just out of a shower? His hair, never greyer, looked wet and pomaded. The eyes less fresh. Behind those glasses they had a watery quality, as happens when you haven’t slept much. Lychees going furry in their syrup.
Those eyes radiated nervousness, with much glancing and darting. Sir Keir admitted he had experienced ‘a lot of pressure and noise’ from horrid Mr Trump.
Did that explain the rheumy gaze? Or is he simply finding the whole thing too much?
This was a clenched, hunted Sir Keir, falling back on old policies, returning to comfort positions, gathering in his robes while talking about how scared the country must be. ‘Struggle’, ‘worry’, ‘shock’, ‘volatility’: these were some of the negatives he used. The press conference reeked of defeatism, of a defensive crouch, of staleness. There was no whirl of impetus, of positive decisions, of advance.
He spoke of meetings he had held and of more that would happen. ‘I can announce…’ he said, and for a second it seemed, hooray, he might have chosen an active option; but then he said he had merely asked the Foreign Secretary to meet with other countries. Oh. ‘We will also convene our military planners,’ he vouchsafed. Another meeting.
He opened by saying the war – ‘not our war!’ – had entered its second month and he wanted ‘to reassure the British people that no matter how fierce this storm, we are well-placed to weather it’. An admirable aim, but more likely to be achieved if your eyes are not slatting from side to side and your whole presence on the stage is not shrieking ‘HELP!’
He continued: ‘We have a long-term plan.’ Basically, this was to blame Brexit and to rejoin the EU in all but name. Sir Keir proposed to hold a summit with at which he would seek new ‘closer economic ties’, no doubt with billions of pounds of fees attached. How the French must look at him and cackle.
Hours earlier, the Australian PM Anthony Albanese, made an address to his people. Yacker ‘Albo’ described problems remarkably similar to those faced here yet he, most unaccountably, did not blame Brexit. Is it possible Sir Keir, who hated Brexit from the outset, was slyly jumping on this war to achieve a long-held desire to glurp us back into Brussels? Was that why he refused to help the US against Iran?
Sir Keir’s vowels were tighter than ever. ‘Allies’ was pronounced ‘ullies’. ‘Manifesto’ became ‘munifesto’. ‘Inter-operability’ was forced down his adenoids and came out like something from a Tunes advert. He was ‘frankly sick and tired’ of our energy bills being so high. That was blamed not on Ed Miliband or opponents of fracking but on ‘the international market’. A ‘five-point plan’ turned out to be entirely un-new.
A quiffed Herbert from Channel 4 wanted to know if Sir Keir had been dithering. Sir Keir hummed and hawed. LBC’s reporter noted just 10 per cent of the public thought Sir Keir was making a good fist of things. That high? An internet influencer was given a question. War didn’t interest him. ‘I’d like to zoom out a bit,’ he jawed, before inviting Sir Keir ‘share a message to the young generation.’ He burped up the Americanism, ‘we’ve got their back’.
‘I’m the British Prime Minister,’ he quacked. Again: ‘I’m the British Prime Minister.’ It was as if the steaming dud was trying to reassure himself rather than the nation he should be leading.
