Weird fantasies about Keir Starmer

Whether delighted about the Labour government or distraught, the British press is responding to the new administration with reliable oddness.

Before I get to the substance of this edition, I wanted to thank you for sticking with me. I’ve had some significant health issues over the past year — I’m living with chronic pain — and I’ve been struggling a lot at times. That’s resulted in my output here being less reliable than it was previously. I’m trying to get back on track and so from now, I will be publishing two issues a week with bonus editions for paid subscribers. I appreciate your patience and support. (And I can only apologise for today’s image).

Previously: Not waving but frowning

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The newspapers haven’t quite worked out how they’re going to deal with the first Labour government in Westminster for fourteen years.

The Daily Telegraph, which was screaming about an imminent apocalypse before polling day (Allister Heath was ranting about “armageddon” as early as June 26), is still failing to pace itself. Tim Stanley sketches Rachel Reeves as a Dalek, Tom Harris (the paper’s tame ex-Labour MP) is already listing Keir Starmer’s “three fatal mistakes”, and Sherelle Jacobs is predicting total collapse (Labour wants to “change” Britain. Instead it could leave it in ruins). Of course, the fanzine for what’s left of the Tory Party, albeit with increasing love for the Estuary Dogs of Reform, is going to lose its mind over a Labour in government but it’s boiling over beyond parody. Can it keep this up for five years?

Over at The Times, the columnists range from uncertain about their angles now the Conservative brand of chaos is gone (its sketchwriter Tom Peck dreading writing five years of dispatches about Rachel Reeves and Hugo Rifkind wondering “what the hell we’re all going to talk about?”) to the unsettlingly amorous. Caitlin Moran has inevitably made it weird with a column about middle-aged women getting hot under the collar about… Keir Starmer:

Honestly, right now, I feel dizzy with how different this all feels. Someone has moved into Downing Street who absolutely, on the first day, asked where the stopcock was and made a careful note of it; and even the wisest people in the world don’t really know what the future holds. It’s quite revelatory. It’s quite gladdening. It’s quite … arousing.

It makes sense. We are currently in the world of weird fantasies about Keir Starmer from centrists and right-wingers alike. The former are projecting their competence fetish onto him, imagining that this will be the government that avoids the quicksand of self-interest, while the latter turn him into the most vivid monster of their nightmares.

For Mail titles, a Labour government is perversely a wonderful outcome. It means it can switch to its most comfortable role as an unelected opposition party. Richard Littlejohn grumbling about first-past-the-post when its failings never bothered him under Tory governments, Sarah Vine writing as though she is an ex-minister rather than her ex-husband, and Peter Hitchens warning of the “chilly commissars that will control Starmergrad” are all familiar tunes.

Over at The Guardian, second choice Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, is heralded as “just the ticket” while the appointment of James Timpson as a prisons minister sends Simon Hattenstone into raptures. Timothy Garten-Ash is just one of many pundits certain that Britain is now “a beacon of stability” compared to the feckless French. Meanwhile, Polly Toynbee has shifted from uncomplicated delight (“Hallelujah and hosanna!”) to offering Starmer an express plan for cleaning up politics.

This isn’t so much a honeymoon period for Labour but a kind of fever dream. The right-wing press is either in a paranoid panic like the Telegraph or listing its demands like The Sun having switched sides with its last-minute endorsement. The centrists are experiencing something akin to their fantasy football team appearing on the pitch with no thought of the bone-crunching reality of real-world fixtures.

We will only escape from their weird fantasies about Keir Starmer when his cabinet produces its first scandal — which it inevitably will. In the meantime, the British press is treating the new Labour government like a magic eye picture, pretending to see what it likes in the collection of new shapes and colours swirling in front of it. After fourteen years of Tory-led governments, the novelty of a new administration needs to wear off before we’ll see anything resembling real scrutiny.

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