We all held our breath and journalists wrote articles about the barrister’s sharp mind and razor reasoning. Here was a fellow who could string a serious question together whilst getting a few laughs at Boris’s expense.
So we all imagined Boris shaking in his boots. And Boris very well probably shook in his boots, as he too likely fell for the bluster just like the rest of us.
And then nothing happened.
Kier certainly came to town hoopin’ an’ a hollerin’, guns-a-blazin’ and set about showing his predecessor Jeremy how a leader of the opposition opposes. Boris was so shagged out after Dominic Cummings won the election for him that Kier managed to get a few jabs in that had us holding our breath. Though this somewhat abated when the pandemic came along and he took the honourable stance of “everyone pulling together” against a common foe, no matter our differences. Yet this vaguely objective, unifying reason for supporting government policy, just like in the good old days of World War II, is beside the point when it comes to Kier. It was not honour or common sense but playing safe that encouraged him to consistently and reliably affirm the government’s Covid response rather than come up with something better himself.
And nothing has continued to happen up until the present. There is no clear policy or direction, plus a humiliating drubbing in the Hartlepool by-election to boot. And even after the so-called victory in Batley and Spen, Kier is merely “looking good in a suit” as Ash Sarkar phrased it in a BBC Radio 4 PM interview.
But we cannot expect any different. The fellow who replaces someone ousted from leadership because he stood for clear and above all decent policies – as did the Devil, aka Jeremy Corbyn – such a fellow is not going to be brimming with principle and conviction. He’s going to play it safe, tow the line, and basically try to keep house for as long as he can in the hope of becoming prime minister out of a Tory balls-up rather than Labour election genius. As Owen Jones opines in the Guardian, “The consensus among Labour MPs is that the principal cause of Starmer’s woes is he lacks a vision”; and that Labour’s right flank “believe he is a dud who will never win an election, and they plan to keep him in post until they can […] ensure one of their own succeeds him before a general election.”
Labour was so shaken by the successful smearing of Corbyn by the right flank, achieved through the cynical exploitation of legitimate concerns over anti-Semitism, that collectively Labour fell for Kier’s slick-backed quiff and suit with a sigh, in blessed relief to Jeremy’s crinkled, Socialist Worker I-just-got-out-of-bed appearance.
Let’s not mistake. Corbyn is one hell of a bore and short on laughs, yet also a decent fellow maligned – to express it in Marlowesque prose. His policies on nationalising public transport and utilities, funding and revamping the NHS, and taxation to pay for it all rang a bell with a majority of the British public, which should have been a winner for Labour. Yet despite this popular political appeal, his personal image was irreparably damaged by the successful blurring and conflation of allegations of anti-Semitism among some Labour MPs, with Corbyn’s legitimate support for justice on the Palestine issue.
Given the popularity of his policies, it is arguable that his fair stance on Palestine was entirely the cause of Corbyn’s downfall, a suspicion lent credence by the fact that his demonization intensified in the run up to the December 2019 election; to the extent that just before the election, Johnathan Sacks, the UK’s late Chief Rabbi and strong supporter of Israel and apparently also of the occupation (Rabbi Sacks, Why Are You Cheerleading for anti-Palestinian Provocateurs?), publicly called Corbyn an “an anti-Semite” who has backed “racists, terrorists and dealers of hate”.
Yet those who can see the facts and understand the motivations for such a statement by Rabbi Sacks did not fall for it. Even prior to this attack, Jewish Voice for Labour published a letter in the Guardian declaring Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour a crucial ally in the fight against antisemitism, reminding everyone of Corbyn’s credentials in consistently fighting anti-Semitism throughout his political career, in flat contradiction to the spurious allegation that Labour had become institutionally anti-Semitic under Corbyn.
The issue of whether antisemitism existed or even abounded in the Labour Party, as some alleged, is one thing. But given Corbyn’s credentials, it does not, however, take a cynic to suggest that Corbyn was personally vilified by Sacks and others solely for his stance of a fair resolution on Palestine. Corbyn, as many people, is anti-Zionist, making him vulnerable to attempts by Zionists to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, in the service of protecting Israel from criticism, and Sacks tapped into this vein in attacking Corbyn. Again several years prior to Sacks’s vilification of Corbyn, Peter Beinart, writing in Haaretz, felt moved to correct the Rabbi on his conflation. (Why Rabbi Sacks Is Wrong: Palestinians Don’t Have to Be anti-Semites to Be anti-Zionists)
There is, then, reasonable suspicion that Corbyn was ousted and replaced by a chap who could be relied upon not to rock the boat when it came to Palestine. The only problem for wider UK politics is that Kier is failing to rock on any front at all. Starmer is a dud as Jones so aptly puts it. He’s as dud as they come, and the only thing you can do with a dud once you have fired it off, presumably in rehearsal for a big event, is to put in a live round. The question is, who’s it going to be? Unless that is, we get another dud.
If the electorate is not to be left with the current dire choice of a jovially flatulent Boris or a somnolent Kier, we need someone quite, but not exactly, like Jeremy, someone with a decent heart, but a few laughs as well.
Could we perhaps clone Kier, Boris and Jeremy into one, knock ’em dead, keep ’em laughing architect of a truly liberal, social democratic Labour party and society? Kier’s sleek looks crossed with Boris’s jolly what-ho-ness, braced firmly with Jeremy’s heart, principles and vision? None of them is particularly stupid as politicians go, except perhaps Boris, and the cross would have the advantage that Kier’s damp obsequiousness would be balanced by Jeremy’s polite fuck-youness, (this latter trait arguably simultaneously both a strong and a weak point of the crinkly left). As for Boris, he can provide the light entertainment.
The art in cloning a perfect politician intent on a social democratic society lies in knowing how to properly, but politely, package a fuck-you aimed at those who would do anything to prevent such a society. Kier is the ideal wrapper; vacuous, dithering, directionless, happy to be given a pat on the back from those who put him there, ever chirpy and optimistic that better days are coming if he just sits still and sits it out. With a few tweaks to expunge the less desirable yes-sir-three-bags-full-sir traits, a hollowed out Kier could be just the ticket for Corbynite policies of genuine social and economic justice that would bring business to heel, as well as nationalise all the essential services and infrastructure that have proven disastrous in the hands of private interests.
This may be a tall order, as there is a natural constraint on combining decency (Jeremy), redundancy (Kier) and the ability to crack a joke at someone else’s expense (Boris) into the mix of traits required to either obtain power (Jeremy’s failing), or wield it properly and selflessly for the good of all (Boris’s catastrophic failing). It is no coincidence that whilst decent Jeremy was a tad too flat, dodgy Boris is a clown.
It is important at this point to own up to the whole reason for this small note, which is not really to rubbish Kier, poke fun at Boris, and lament the treacherous demise of Jeremy. It is to consider what might bring about a decent society, one that we design for ourselves yet with considerably better results.
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