Lloyd Evans

Keir-mania. Is it possible? Can we imagine it? Stadiums full of besotted voters chanting his name in frenzies of adoration. ‘Star-Muh! Star-Muh!’ No. Never going to happen. Sir Keir tinkled his way through his six questions at PMQs hoping to trip up the PM. Instead he put his own weaknesses in the spotlight. Far from being the ice-cool super-inquisitor, Sir Keir turns out to be thin-skinned and tantrum-prone. Boris enjoys tormenting him. When challenged, Boris likes to accuse the Labour leader of unpatriotic hypocrisy. Today, Sir Keir took the bait. When he criticised the government’s job retention scheme, Boris described his approach as disingenuous. ‘He has to work out whether he’s going to support or oppose the government’s programme.

Rishi Sunak made his summer statement this afternoon. The chancellor is never less than immaculately turned out. Skinny blue suit, coiffed hair, silver-grey tie gathered in a discreet knot, a white shirt that glowed like a snow-capped peak at noon. And he oozed board-room competence. One half expected the lights in the Commons to fall and a screen to be unrolled for a Powerpoint presentation. He draws his rhetoric from many sources. In today’s speech we got a hint of Thatcher: ‘I believe in the nobility of work. I believe in the inspiring power of opportunity.’ We heard a reminder of Blair:  ‘I am not dogmatic. I believe in what works.’ There was a faint echo of Churchill:  ‘Hardship lies ahead but no one will be left without hope.

Today the prime minister tried out his ‘spoonful of sugar’ routine. Boris has decided that no political problem exists that can’t be solved with a dose of bonhomie, a chorus of ‘build, build, build’, and a £600 billion bung to rocket-boost the economy. This ramshackle strategy was all he brought to PMQs. Against him Sir Keir Starmer was keen to display his world-class mastery of detail. The king of the quibblers was on top form. At least by his own standards. His goal was to blame the PM for the heatwave that recently brought thousands of super-spreaders to Bournemouth beach. Having sleuthed his way through Boris’s recent utterances he found a phrase, ‘show some guts’, issued to authorities in seaside towns.

Barristers say there are two types of performers in court. The rhinos use brash, crude, overpowering blows. The snakes are subtle, unpredictable and deadly. Today at PMQs, the two beasts met. Boris came out of the jungle at full charge. ‘I think the honourable gentleman has been stunned by the success of the test and trace operation,’ he bellowed. He was responding to Sir Keir Starmer’s criticism of the government’s testing regime. ‘Contrary to his prognostications of gloom,’ Boris went on, ‘it has got up and running much faster than expected.’ Sir Keir, all serpentine cunning, asked him about the failure of the app to trace every relevant contact. Boris thrashed and snorted. Starmer's certainly a class act.

A testy, ill-tempered PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer began by welcoming the anti-viral breakthrough achieved by British scientists. He got an instant slap-down. ‘I’m glad he’s finally paying tribute to the efforts of this country in tackling the coronavirus,’ said Boris, finding Sir Keir guilty of anti-British sentiment. The PM was road-testing a new jingoistic approach today. He believes his handling of the pandemic is the greatest achievement since the invention of the steam engine. And the furlough is the jewel in this glorious crown. ‘Eleven million jobs protected by a scheme unlike anything anywhere else in world!’ he enthused. Perhaps Sir Keir would be asked to ‘take a knee’ for the job retention programme.

It’s official. The Labour party now has two leaders. Both are knights. But it’s hard to say which is the real Sir Keir Starmer. Not even Sir Keir Starmer seems to know. Good Sir Keir is the kindly, decent comrade who wants to aid his fellow man at a time of crisis. Wicked Sir Keir is the dastardly villain who plots to unhorse his foe with a poisoned lance or a hidden dagger. At PMQs he began as Good Sir Keir. He thanked Boris for extending the furlough and for voicing his opposition to racial prejudice. Then he got all dastardly. He read out a fistful of statistics proving that Britain has suffered the world’s worst corona-shambles. Our excess death toll, at 63,000, is shockingly high. Then this: ‘Last week he said he was proud of his record.

Three faces peered out of the screen. At noon, last Saturday, Facebook hosted a digital debate between a trio of grandees from the Stop the War Coalition. Former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, appeared in a plain white room that matched his open-necked shirt. The novelist Arundhati Roy spoke from Delhi. And the veteran activist, Tariq Ali, began the session by telling viewers that thousands were watching all around the globe. The great campaigners spent 70 minutes trying to create world peace from their kitchen tables. Tariq Ali is no longer the dashing figure of the 1960s who won fame protesting against the Vietnam war. A snowy mane now crowns his head. And he wears a copiously sprouting white moustache which makes him resemble a retired gunfighter in a Dodge City saloon.

A testy, ill-tempered PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer accused Boris of presiding over a corona-shambles. The PM fired back and asked the Labour leader to show ‘signs of co-operation’ with the government’s efforts. Sir Keir was able to cite a ‘sign of co-operation’. A letter written to the PM two weeks ago about helping to reopen schools. He hadn’t received a reply. ‘I’m surprised he should take that tone,’ said Boris aggressively. ‘I took the trouble to ring him up and we had a long conversation in which I briefed him about all the steps we were taking...He thoroughly endorsed our approach.’ Sir Keir sniffed grandly that the letter had been ‘confidential’. And he waved a piece of paper. The letter, presumably.

It has come down to a classroom contest. The swot versus the wag. The smart Alec against the rugger captain. The chemistry nerd who wants to join the cool kids behind the bike-sheds. Sir Keir has been praised for his ‘forensic’ attacks on Boris at PMQs. What is ‘forensic’? ‘Forum’ means a market-place and later it referred to an arena where trials were held. ‘Public square’ more or less covers it. And though Starmer is adept at court-room dissections he’ll never appeal to the throng. He isn’t box-office. His great distinction is also his curse. He’s like the prosecutor in a fraud trial methodically piling up an impenetrable tonnage of evidence while the jurors daydream, the clerks doodle and the judge dozes.