When I woke up yesterday morning, almost the first thing I saw was the announcement that Keir Starmer was to address the nation imminently. Despite the seriousness of the situation in the Middle East, I’m afraid my first thought was ‘Nah, we’re all right, don’t put yourself out Keir mate’, although possibly not quite so politely expressed.
Because lecternmania – the getting out of that little prime ministerial podium to speak to the people of Britain – has gone too far. I do wish our beloved leaders would stop it.
His line to America seems to be: ‘It’s nothing to do with us, but – if you wouldn’t mind – please continue to put your military on the line to secure our energy supplies’
It turned out that Starmer’s big announcement was that we are not going to join in a world war. This has been the case for every other of the previous 29,416 mornings, but for some reason this one necessitated a direct address.
These lectern addresses should surely be saved up for absolutely epochal moments. Of the ones that I can remember over my lifetime, only the announcement of the first lockdown counted as serious enough to be worth it. (Ironically, mayfly Liz Truss got a ‘fair enough’ one also, after the death of the Queen.)
In fact, before Theresa May I can’t recall seeing very many of such occasions; Blair was always giving press conferences, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. Theresa May got the lectern out four times over the three years of her pitiful premiership; she appeared to think we were glued to the minutiae of her Brexit negotiations. She also displayed an infuriating lack of punctuality, leaving journalists speculating desperately over shots of the lectern. When you summon the nation’s attention, you’d better be on time.
The idea behind Starmer’s latest address seems to have been to calm everybody and everything down. But this was a project hobbled from the off, because the presence of Starmer is enough to give anybody the screaming collywobbles at the best of times. If I wanted to be reassured, then the face of Sir Keir Rodney Starmer KC would not be among my top million choices, coming well behind a dental abscess and a zombie attack. True to form, mere hours after Starmer’s attempt to fold the nation under his comforting wing, the top story on the Mail website was how we’d probably have rationing by April.
It turned out that Starmer was there mostly to re-announce previously announced announcements, and also to waffle on in general about how marvellous he is because his folks had trouble meeting the gas bill in 1974. Does that really count as worthy of an urgent national address? If so, several million of us should get our podiums out. Incredibly, Starmer really seems to think that his history and his personality are his winning cards.
Any other PM might get some mileage out of ‘standing up’ to America and not rushing off to the Strait of Hormuz. But how could we join in Trump’s adventure, exactly? Perhaps we could deploy some of our much-vaunted soft power, and send Adele, or the cast of Bridgerton? The progressive fantasy of telling the United States where to go, immortalised in Love Actually, might be a real vote winner. But not for our Keir. Even against an American president who is incredibly unpopular in Britain, it just doesn’t count. Maybe because we all saw him creeping and crawling to The Donald when it suited him.
‘We have to reopen the Strait of Hormuz’ said Starmer, at the same time refusing to do anything to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. His line to America seems to be ‘It’s nothing to do with us, but – if you wouldn’t mind – please continue to put your military on the line to secure our energy supplies’.
The last few weeks have been an enormous splash of cold water in the British face; the grim realisation that we just don’t matter on the international scene, and that it was a polite fiction that we did. Watching Labour trying to navigate this has been hilarious; the highlight so far was Laura Kuenssberg printing off an enormous pie chart to try and get Ed Miliband to acknowledge the political reality of rising energy bills, like Father Ted explaining the concept of distance to Dougal.
It is striking that the increased use of the lectern has coincided with this diminution of our international importance. Starmer appeared yesterday positioned between two enormous Union Jacks. We are getting like a sinking tinpot dictatorship, floundering with all its boastful regalia out; Starmer is Idi Amin played by Richard Briers.
But the main issue with all this lecterning is that it debases the gravity of the (thankfully still rare) occasions when it really matters. An address to the nation should be a vanishingly rare thing. If the lectern is wheeled out before the cameras every other week, how are we to know when something really momentous and serious occurs?
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