Oddly energised by crisis, the nasal knight broke cover in Hertfordshire where he quacked away at a quickly assembled gathering of middle-aged types.
Sir Keir kept clenching his fists. He was in chunky white shirtsleeves (no tie) and had done that thing when he neatly folds back the sleeves a couple of inches, to demonstrate muscular intent.
He was shouting a bit, too.
Nearly being ousted had given the old booby an adrenaline rush. He stood in the middle of a community centre which itself had hurriedly been decorated with patriotic bunting.
Sir Keir is normally a stationary orator, flat on his size-nines. This time he kept waving his arms, darting forward a pace, then leaping backwards. Ostrich at a disco. A fencer practising feints.
He did much pursing and licking of his lips. This was interlaced with weird, random smiles. He spoke – groan – about Arsenal. He said he was looking forward to ‘havin’ a cuppa tea’.
The event was arranged for the benefit of television’s rolling-news cameras. Around him sat a few underwhelmed souls wondering when they could toddle home. They clapped maybe just a little too hard when he stopped talking.
This matinee performance felt as if it might be a rehash, platitude for platitude, of the speech he gave behind closed doors to Labour MPs and peers on Monday night.
The nasal knight broke cover in Hertfordshire where he quacked away at a quickly assembled gathering of middle-aged types, writes Quentin Letts
If that wasn’t retro enough for you, Andy Burnham popped up at the Resolution Foundation (a Lefty think-tank) and made his own pitch for Labour hearts by enthusing about that decade of strikes, inflation and national decline: the Seventies, says our sketchwriter
It was about how he was the prime minister for the neglected masses and would fight, fight, fight for them while there was ‘breath in his body’. Zzzzzzzzzz.
He marvelled that he, from the working class, had made it to Downing Street. Has no one ever told him about Edward Heath or John Major?
Sir Keir’s corner-men had been working on his morale and told him he did wonderfully well on Monday night. And he believed them! There was an unearned swagger here. ‘I’ll never walk away from the country I love,’ he bellowed.
He coughs up such cliches like a voice on satnav. For all the frenzied limb-waving, nothing could make him mint the words with authenticity. His brain can’t process that concept. It sees language as a commodity, not art. Nothing will alter that.
You cannot learn to appreciate words unless you read novels and poetry, unless you gulp down life, immersing yourself in all its richness and cruelty. Sir Keir can only feign spontaneity, can only itemise emotion. He buys originality from a dealer. He has his insights delivered.
This limited Prime Minister is an unconvincing interpreter of the human condition because he only repeats others’ phrases and trots out truisms. He is drab. Ersatz.
Following his spiel there were perfunctory questions. These asked him about ‘silos’ and ‘frameworks’, ‘child poverty strategy’ and ‘support for interventions’.
On the doorsteps of Denton, comrades, they talk of little else. Sir Keir was fascinated to find the language of Whitehall thriving in the Home Counties.
He enumerated wonkish policy options on his pinkies. Blinking with excitement, he spoke of ‘laddering-up’ and ‘routes off’ and ‘making sure people have adequate resource’. Good God, did Shakespeare live in vain?
Back in London, the morning had been notable for the Prime Minister’s silence. Into the vacuum bounced that most imperishable of Indian-rubber balls, Ed Miliband. On Radio 4 he bragged that the thing Sir Keir cared about more than anything was the class divide.
If that wasn’t retro enough for you, Andy Burnham popped up at the Resolution Foundation (a Lefty think-tank) and made his own pitch for Labour hearts by enthusing about that decade of strikes, inflation and national decline: the Seventies.
Messrs Miliband and Burnham wished to tempt Labour further to the Left. Ed wanted to tax the rich more. Andy was keen for us all to ride in state-run buses, while thinking municipal thoughts.
Whatever one might think about such visions, the two men communicated them with a certain brio. They managed to convey character. Magnetic would be over-stating it but they were at least distinctive.
Unlike the oblong potato.