QUENTIN LETTS: Starmer’s bid to be Father of the Nation fell flat amid a locust cloud of cliches. He was Hamlet as forged by human sources
Put aside any ideology. On a subject such as this, one wanted him to find a princely tone. Sir Keir Starmer summoned the TV cameras to Downing Street so that he could address the nation in an 8.30am statement.
He discerned that the Southport murders were dreadful enough to merit prime ministerial comment.
This was indeed a moment for some stiffening moral fibre from the top of our elected government. Most reasonable people will root for a PM at such times in the hope that he can find the words and demeanour to make some sense of what happened.
It soon became apparent that Sir Keir was falling short in his attempt to be Father of the Nation. The delivery was stiff. He looked jolted, angular, abrupt. Self-defensive.
He started talking about his own record on ‘spotting failures in grooming cases at my institution, the Crown Prosecution Service, 14 years ago’. Please, Sir Keir. Another time and place for political back-covering, perhaps. But not here.
Any half-decent adviser would have drawn a red pen through most instances of ‘I’ in this speech. If the first-person must be used, let it be first-person plural.
The statement lasted 17 minutes and ended with a vow to ‘honour those three little girls’. At which, not for the first time, he momentarily leaned his left elbow on the lectern.
Why? In an attempt to convey intimacy? It was the gesture of a pub regular leaning on the bar as he settled into an anecdote. It felt improper for such a performance.
Merseyside Police today issued this mugshot of Axel Rudakubana, 18, of Banks, Lancashire, after he pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to all 16 counts he was charged with
The PM told a press conference in Downing Street that people were right to ‘demand answers’ over ‘failings’ in the case of Axel Rudakubana
Some will say ‘performance’ is a discreditable concept in cases so sensitive. But the ability to act, or to project character, is essential in politicians. Assuming they do possess some character.
The event was held in the Downing Street media room which was recently given an £80,000 rejig at Sir Keir’s insistence so that the backdrop would not be such a Tory blue. The backdrop is now wooden; as was Sir Keir. Had he stuck with the blue he might not have looked such a plank.
He began by saying that ‘the senseless, barbaric murders’ were ‘a devastating moment in our history’ and that every parent would think ‘it could have been anywhere, it could have been our children’. Amen to that.
There was a line about how, when you normally wake from a nightmare, ‘the first thing you do is reassure yourself with reality, but for too many people the state of our society no longer does that’. Internet violence, conspiracy theories, post-pandemic truancy levels, bureaucratic inertia: all were fair points, as was his praise for the decency of most emergency services. They deserved a better delivery.
Our democracy needs efficient, persuasive political communicators. Instead of which we have this blockage in the works. Everything about Sir Keir, from his scraped hair gel and the boxy-shouldered new suit to his formulaic exasperation, felt rigid.
He came across not as an answer but as a barrier. An impediment. He is too much a part of the bureaucracy that keeps us under its thumb.
Sir Keir said it was a ‘devastating moment in our history’ and must be a ‘line in the sand’ for Britain, with ‘fundamental change’ in the way citizens are protected
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood (left) and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (right) were in No9 to watch the PM’s statement
One practical suggestion: those designer spectacles donated by Lord Alli do him no favours. They create a stern vertical at the top of his vision field and that prevents us seeing into his soul. Lose the glasses.
What else would a theatre director say to help this tense ham? Stop hopping from foot to foot. Stop leaning on that lectern. Stop the puppet hand gestures. Gesticulated emphasis (he has one very odd hand gesture, as if holding a sausage between thumb and forefinger) may be fine for party-conference speeches but when you are talking about the murder of children, it jars.
Three times and more he droned about ‘a line in the sand’. ‘Nothing will be off the table’. ‘National renewal.’ ‘No stone will be unturned.’ A locust cloud of cliches. He thought it sounded noble but all it achieved was an overwhelming sense of staleness. He was Hamlet as cast by human resources. Legal opacity in place of poetic grit.
