Fear Keir, Boris... he’s everything you aren’t
ONE is a serious political leader with decent judgment, and the other is Boris Johnson.
Keir Starmer repeatedly schooling the incompetent Prime Minister in the art of sensible decision-making is why jaundiced Johnson’s “Captain Hindsight” jibes are backfiring on a PM always late to the party.
His Labour rival is proving to be Major Foresight when it comes to combating a mutating plague.
U-turns aren’t gift wrapped more spectacularly, or humiliatingly, than switching from Santa to the Grinch to cancel Christmas.
Particularly when three days earlier, foolish Johnson taunted Starmer that tightening restrictions would be “inhuman” after the Labour man pointed out that scientists had warned the PM’s relaxations would kill.
No wonder a growing number of MPs across the Tory Party fear Starmer who, as a former Director of Public Prosecutions, skilfully demonstrates the guilt of Downing Street’s repeat offender.
And a smaller yet similarly expanding group of Conservative MPs question the fitness for high office of the struggling and cynical liar who only a year ago delivered their decisive election victory.
Alarm bells ring louder since Johnson ignored a woman who had lost two family members to the virus. Embarrassingly, the PM failed to offer condolences and words of comfort at Saturday’s hastily- arranged TV press conference.
“When the bloody virus left him in intensive care at death’s door,” a Tory critic of Johnson told me, “you’ve got to wonder if long Covid is disrupting his decision-making faculties.” That’s writing a doctor’s note for a PM incapable of effective leadership even before he was sick – with dithering over March’s lockdown costing thousands of lives. With Brexit’s collapsing negotiations potentially becoming bitter icing on a lethal virus Christmas cake, Johnson’s failings are national liabilities. Voters are realising Starmer would be a far superior PM.
His quips aren’t as funny and the immaculately dressed lawyer combs rather than ruffles his hair. But the joke is on Britain – and it’s a bad joke – the longer Johnson survives in No10.