Being an Opportunist Has Worked Well for Johnson. Why Not for Starmer?

This is a perceptive article. I’d add we’re happy with politicians lying in certain circumstances because we understand sometimes they have to. I doubt Johnson fools anyone in the sense we believe what he says, or trust him, but that’s not what he’s for.

Whereas Starmer is chronically nervous about saying ‘the wrong thing’, such that in interviews he hardly says anything at all, Johnson couldn’t care less about saying the wrong thing: he appears, at least, to speak his mind. The result is to make Starmer seem even more suspicious, more establishment and less trustworthy than Johnson – perhaps the most establishment and untrustworthy politician there really is.

As for Starmer, I despair. I do get why he wants to portray himself as the not-Corbyn, but to then ditch all those great Labour policies of the 2017 and 2019 elections in the name of fighting the battles of 1994, or of trying to contort yourself around the flagpole patriotism of a bunch of far-right Tories, is bizarre in the extreme. No-one is going to buy that sort of obfuscation.