Not everything can be blamed on desperate PM

Footage of Sir Keir Starmer being mobbed by Jimmy Savile-obsessed anti-vaxxers predictably saw blame heaped on Boris Johnson.

But that’s not entirely fair.

It reached the point quite a while ago where the gaffe-prone PM’s detractors did not need to reach for tenuous criticism to discredit him.

True, Johnson did take to the dispatch box and parrot a right wing trope.

True, he then failed on numerous occasions to apologise or retract his comments - a failure leapt on by at least one beleaguered aide as a reason to finally quit.

But to solely blame him for Starmer being set upon achieves nothing and is unnecessary.

Conspiracists were spouting the Savile nonsense months ago.

After Monday’s incident those same loonies were quick to call the whole thing a set up - claiming Starmer was used as bait.

What Johnson - a man they hate just as much as Starmer - did do was make some of them feel vindicated and give their bogus claim oxygen.

Starmer was in charge of the CPS when the decision not to prosecute Savile was taken, but he had nothing to do with the case.

Johnson’s leap from Starmer being in charge to him being the one who let Savile walk free is exactly the same one the conspiracists make on their shadowy message boards.

Johnson used it, to some effect, to detract attention from his own failings. It had no relevance to the argument they were having whatsoever.

It should be called out for what it was: desperate, barrel-scraping politics by a man drinking in the crumbling cellar of the last chance saloon.

But blaming him for what happened outside Parliament simply gives the PM’s defenders a boost.

Ironically, they’ll just call it desperate.

‘To solely blame him for Starmer being set upon achieves nothing and is unnecessary’