No one should expect Keir Starmer to arrive at the Labour party conference in Liverpool next week dressed in a wetsuit and waving wildly from a jet ski as Ed Davey did for his in Brighton on Saturday.
The prime minister often expresses his distaste for “performative politics”, and if the consensus is that he has overdone the gloom or could do with showing a bit of the Liberal Democrat leader’s ebullience, it might also be accepted that they have very disparate roles to play. Whereas Starmer once said that ordinary people worried about their future weren’t going to take much comfort from him doing stunts like a bungee jump, Davey’s desperation to be noticed in the last election meant he just did one anyway.
