Eyes darting side to side, Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘I am sorry.’ The words were spoken with sullen emphasis, almost in capital letters. He issued his apology at a community centre in Hastings, East Sussex, in front of a small audience of reporters and Labour supporters. Somewhere nearby an agricultural vehicle was making a loud beeping, as happens when machines are reversing after a wrong turn.
Sir Keir was in his ‘mixing with common people’ outfit, which consists of a black shirt, a dark jacket and no tie. After the week’s calamities did he look haggard? Drawn? Generally knackered? No. Couldn’t have looked much fresher. The bogbrush hairdo was freshly scraped and he seemed rested. Perhaps he simply hasn’t a clue what doo-doo he is in.
He had dragged his retinue to this dusty venue ostensibly to make a speech about British decency and community values. That, in the light of l’affaire Mandelson, obviously acquired a certain ripeness. Ah, the good old British qualities of betrayal, corruption and sexual indiscretion. The strengths that built an Empire!
Aides, fearing that a speech all about decency might expose the PM to a certain amount of sarcasm, wrote him a longish ‘not me guv’ preamble. This was plopped out with much indignant blinking. The nasal knight wanted us to know how outraged he was that Peter Mandelson had behaved in, er, entirely characteristic fashion.
The nasal knight wanted us to know how outraged he was that Peter Mandelson had behaved in, er, entirely characteristic fashion, writes Quentin Letts
Mrs Badenoch, in a coffee-coloured silk shirt, went hungrily to work. ‘It’s a question of when, not if, he goes,’ she spat. ‘His self-righteousness is his greatest weakness’
North London lawyer Sir Keir said he had entered politics ‘not to live a life detached from the reality most people face’. All those Gospel Oak dinner parties with Phil Shiner, Richard Hermer and Philippe Sands talking about human rights: yeoman banter, my hearties. All those marches with Vegans for Venezuela, or whatever causes were fashionable with Leftie-activist comrades: the honest muck and toil of the masses.
He kept mentioning Peter Mandelson but only by the surname, which was uttered resentfully, his muzzle pushing forward. ‘Mundelson.’ Ambassador became ‘umbusudur’. Sir Keir clamped his lips together with disgust, his mouth forming a little roundel of cat’s-bottom tightness.
The speech’s pace was glacial. He claimed he had been eager to release the Mandelson documents – ‘I WANTED to release them yesterday.’ This was not quite true, was it? His original Commons amendment on Wednesday was a cover-up gambit, abandoned only when he realised that his backbenchers would not wear it.
What will Labour MPs have made of this speech? It plodded. Cliche followed cliche: ‘as long as I’ve got breath in my body; with every fibre of my being; let me be clear; mark my words; call out; frankly’. This was not oratory. It was not personal enough to convince as a mea culpa. It was stodgy porridge, the usual glue, oratory by artificial intelligence, surely, for no sentient No 10 aide could pen such cardboard. How can a prime minister be so prosaic?
Sir Keir was still droning away, blaming everyone but himself, when Kemi Badenoch muscled her way to a microphone in front of a throng of genteel Tories. The venue was the Horseguards Hotel off London’s Embankment. It was once the HQ of MI5 and MI6. The space we were in was formerly a billiards room with faience tiles and an air of faded opulence.
Mrs Badenoch, in a coffee-coloured silk shirt, went hungrily to work, inviting Labour backbenchers to come and talk to her Whips to discuss drafting a Commons no-confidence vote in the prime minister. ‘It’s a question of when, not if, he goes,’ she spat. ‘His self-righteousness is his greatest weakness.’
Her come-hither will almost certainly be ignored by Labour MPs. It was a daft but cheeky offer. Yet that was by the by. Her purpose was to accentuate her success, to remind voters of her role in Wednesday’s dramas, and to revel in Sir Keir’s parliamentary difficulties. ‘He’s bang to rights,’ she said. The audience chuckled but Mrs Badenoch’s gaze remained unsmiling. Though her speech was animated, her eyes slid over the audience with a beady, unlaughing glint.