Globe-trotting Starmer has sense of humour failure over ‘Beach Ken’ comparison
At the start of Sir Keir Starmer’s interview on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, during a summit of the centre-left’s great and the good in Montreal, the veteran interviewer asked the Labour leader: “Is this getting the Third Way band back together?”
It certainly looked like it.
Mr Third Way himself, Sir Tony Blair, was one of the key participants, along with his Blairite disciple, former UK foreign secretary David Miliband, current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the poster girls for the progressive left, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and Sanna Marin of Finland.
The summit was, its organisers claimed, the biggest gathering of left-leaning leaders in 15 years.
And for the globe-trotting Sir Keir, it was the middle leg in a three-country tour that began with a visit to Europol in the Hague and will conclude with what could be the start of a new bromance with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris early next week.
Meetings between UK opposition leaders and leading figures on the international stage have not always gone well.
David Cameron had a good meeting with Barack Obama at the US ambassador’s residence in London during the G20 summit hosted by Gordon Brown in 2009.
But when Neil Kinnock met Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office at the White House in 1987, the president mistook Denis Healey, then Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, for the British ambassador.
After his talks at Interpol in the Hague, Sir Keir went to Montreal with his border security plans at the top of his agenda, even if for some of the leaders present climate change, the cost of living and human rights were their priorities.
In his Sky News interview, Trevor Phillips asked him whether his proposal to treat the small boat gangs trafficking illegal migrants across the English Channel like terrorists meant holding them in detention without trial for 28 days, for example.
It would appear not. Drawing on his experience as director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, Sir Keir talked about “joint operations”, in other words more international co-operation. That’s what he talked about with Interpol in the Hague, he said.
The Montreal summit was “talking about those issues in a global way”, he said.
And in an interview with The Times on Friday, he talked about using the courts to freeze smugglers’ assets and restrict their movements.
He was punchy in his fightback against Tory attacks on his strategy, dismissing as “garbage” and “nonsense” the Tories’ claims that in a trade-off with the EU he’d open the door to up to 100,000 migrants.
And he had a good gag at Suella Braverman’s expense when he told Trevor: “The only person that’s gone to Rwanda is the home secretary.” Boom, boom!
On the cost of living, which was on the agenda at the summit, Sir Keir hinted at tax cuts for the less well off if Labour wins the next election.
“I want the tax burden to come down, particularly on working people,” he said.
No surprise there. But anyone hoping the Labour leader might intervene to stop London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s unpopular £12.50 ULEZ charge, which has caused fury in London suburbs and the home counties, will be disappointed.
“I’ve got two children, as you know, aged 15 and 12,” he said. “I don’t give them dirty water to drink. I don’t want them to breathe in dirty air. So we can’t do nothing.”
He did add, however: “But what I don’t want is a scheme that disproportionately hits those working people who need to use their cars.”
Sense of humour failure on Ken comments
The interview ended with a grimacing Sir Keir forced to listen to Penny Mordaunt cruelly comparing him to Ken, the character with a split personality in the movie box office hit Barbie.
“Beach Ken,” Mordaunt declared to MPs in the Commons on Thursday, “stands for nothing on shifting sands in his flip flops, staring out to sea, doing nothing constructive to stop small boats or grow the economy.
“And when we examine his weak record on union demands, on border control, on protecting the public and stopping small boats, we discover that like Beach Ken, he has zero balls.”
Trevor responded with a smirk: “Now, I’m not going to invite you to prove anything on camera, but would you like to correct the anatomical record?”
At this point, the Labour leader appeared to suffer from a sense of humour failure.
“I just think when a government has completely run out of energy and ideas and the ability to shape or change anything, they go down this rabbit hole of ridiculous insults,” he harrumphed. “It’s water off a duck’s back to me.”
And on that discordant note it was back to mingle with the great and the good of the Third Way tribute band for Sir Keir and doing what all leaders, government or opposition, enjoy: being feted on the world stage.
For Sir Keir, the best is yet to come on his mini world tour, however.
The red carpet at the Elysee Palace beckons. He even gets to meet the French president a few days before the state visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla.
From the Third Way to a new entente cordiale in a matter of days for the Labour leader.