What has Starmer got left in his arsenal?
Why are some of us surprised? Why are we still secretly hopeful? Well, I mean I’m obviously not. In fact, I frequently tweet about how unalarmed and disenfranchised I have become — when you’re a die hard lefty like me, you can see particularly clearly into the future but, on account of preserving your ego, do not do anything to warn anyone else about this grizzly world of Union Jacks and ‘levelling up’, until election night when, while sipping a pint of £6.40 Brewdog IPA, you smugly say how doomed this whole centrism malarkey was all along. However, for the doe-eyed, FBPE, tennis playing Labour voter who, for starters really didn’t get why lockdown meant the courts had to close (it’s outside isn’t it?) but more importantly still feels a unique sense of horror every single time a ‘Britain Elects’ poll reads CON: 45% (+3), even after Priti Patel ate that child on live television (something that the St Pauls ’78 — it was different in my day! — WhatsApp chat simply cannot stomach) there is certainly plenty to feel fed up with and confused about.
From the avid season ticket holder, to the divorced dad who hums the Match of the Day theme tune while watering his damning indictment of newly single life: his treasured Japanese peace lily, it is virtually universally recognised that, despite the protests that they do, albeit increasingly rarely, have a knack for just ‘walking it in’, Arsenal are, bluntly, a team made-up of Chelsea pensioners minus the frippery. Starmer’s only memorable line during his fairly underwhelming first year of having-a-go-at-doing-a-bit-of-that-thing-called-politics, has been that the Labour Party is under “new management”. That certainly sounds exciting. The fans love it at first. Hopefully he brings in some new players, they gleefully exclaim! Eventually, after a prolonged period of scrappy fixtures climaxing with back-to-back defeats to a weakened Villa side, and a high-flying, high-ponied Leeds team, they ask “So what exactly is the plan then?” The shadow front bench look bemused, totally miffed that anyone has dared question the current freakishly elusive political strategy, “Piss off mate, it’s all Corbyn’s fault remember, and before you say it, yes that includes the anti-lockdown loony pub owner.” Ah, the warm, welcoming embrace of the opposition.
When he’s not clattering into London cyclists — possibly his best chance yet at appeasing the Brexit-loving, flag-shagging wallies up in those Red Wall seats (I think that’s the party line?) — he appears to have taken a bruised Labour Party all the way from a struggling 9th to a competitive 10th, in one and a bit seasons! SURE, the fans aren’t here to witness the persistent squandering of fairly routine chances, and too bloody right it’s a lot do with that sodding VAR. ‘They’ve got to get this bloody rule changed’ Starmer choruses every Sunday evening. Chuckling, he says ‘Bamford should do the Coronavirus press briefings!’ sneering into the vacant abyss of his dimly lit, but sensibly furnished living room, while fiddling with his phone trying to select which emoji best suits Angela Rayner — why is there no back-stabber emoji?
The ‘trust the process’ idea (typically introduced when things are inevitably fucked) incorporated both by Gunners fans who cannot yet accept that Arteta is more of an Everton legend than an Arsenal one, and also by those Metropolitan luvvies who yearn for a progressive bloody alliance to sort all this nonsense out, seems to be wearing thin with, well just about everyone. Blair can reminisce all he wants about his pre-illegal war dominance, the invincibles, the golden era, but that’s in the past, you need not continue to lord it over us all. Fine, Mandelson was running the show in the early noughties, as a Viera style figure bossing the box-to-box role, Campbell (Alistair, not Sol) was like Bergkamp, running rings round a fresh faced Iain Duncan-Smith (which I suppose is a piece of piss really, let’s not praise a fish for swimming), and lastly, reliable old Gordon Brown as the innocent waterboy, picking up the debris/getting lumped with the pesky credit crunch bit at the end, as the neoliberal shine quickly turned to shit. But hey, it was a winning formula, right? It will work again, right? Everyone loved New Labour didn’t they? Even though people like Yvette Cooper, who was introduced to the commons in 1997 at the inception of Blairism, will lose their seat at the next GE on account of a sodding injury-time vaccine bounce (or something of that nature), all we have to do in the meantime is pop a big flag behind us, say that we agree with the incumbent party on everything apart from something we won’t explain, play musical chairs with the high-ranking women in the party when the elections go badly, and listen to our old mate Tony (no, not Tony Adams!) “the mullet” Blair.
It must be hard trying to replicate Ian Wright’s audacious style of flat caps and posh specs, while actually having surprisingly sound eyesight for a man closing in on 60, and in all honesty not really being a ‘hat guy’, unless it’s one of those funny old lawyer wigs hey Keir! Maybe, in the same vein as Arteta, he was not quite ready for the leap into such high-level, competitive management, especially considering he was tasked with trying to reinvent a team that has never really been the same since ’03, say the cynics at least.
His new plan to get the camera crew in, so ‘we the people’ can get a better idea of who the real Keir is, will predictably end in tears. Beyond the televised scenes of routine parliamentary cries of ‘hear, hear’, Keir is known solely as the fella who single-handedly ruined every secondary school English teacher’s life, by debunking the ‘i, before e, except after C’ rule. But ultimately, people don’t want to be right in the thick of it, Keir; they just want vaccines, Tipping Point, and 25% off at Carluccio’s once in a while! Get back to those focus groups Keir and keep persisting, surely some of those Northern lot aren’t as daft as they seem? (I’m sure this is the party line, right?!)
Needless to say, getting the public on your side is visibly, at least for the Labour Party, becoming increasingly difficult difficult lemon difficult. All the while, ample-bosomed Johnson absorbs the corruption scandals, and wins the hearts of the aforementioned disillusioned Northerners, like some sort of sleazy partially permeable membrane. How does he keep getting away with it all? Why are we held to higher ethical standards? Why is Gavin Williamson still employed? Do they know it’s Christmas?
Anywho, the end of the season is nigh, the transfer window is wide open, dreams of European glory are long gone despite Jo Swinson’s best endeavours (fuck has anyone heard from her by the way?). But how much longer can Sir Keir last? The substitutes look like a motley crew, a paltry lot. The trophy and shadow cabinet both look weathered, void of both ambition and sense. Most of us think Rachel Reeves is likely the name of a comic book superheroine like Wonder Woman or Jessica Jones, but just with a tougher stance of benefits. The Super League fiasco took less than a weekend to rise and fall, and while utterly brutal for those poor billionaires involved, the whole saga was over before it had really begun and will only really live on as a brief footnote in the expanding history of what the unimaginative clichè-reliant folks still insist is ‘the beautiful game’. Admittedly, Eric Cantona kicking that walking stick wielding woman was far more memorable, and in many ways a more effective two-fingers (or feet in this case) to the powers-that-be. Starmer looks set for a much more agonising and prolonged fall from, well not grace, but whatever the level below that is. It certainly is a ruthless world out there Keir, sort of like a more realistic hunger games, but instead of the hunky Hemsworth waiting for you back at base camp, it’s that same old Arsenal season ticket gathering dust. My advice would be to get yourself an allotment — it’s a fail safe way to retire as leader, and who knows, if you’re lucky, you’ll get the whip removed, have a breather from the histrionics of Westminster, and can quietly, and indeed smugly, watch the next person craft their own slow demise from the safety of the stands.
