Sadiq Khan and Sajid Javid's fathers: bus drivers. Theresa May and Gordon Brown's: clergymen. John Major's: a music hall performer. If you knew any of these, congratulations, you are a deeply weird person. In fact, even if you didn't, you are still a little strange because you subscribe to a daily newsletter (thank you, by the way!)
The most intriguing statistic of the last 24 hours in British politics isn't that Reform UK has overtaken the Conservatives in a YouGov poll. With a hat tip to Professor Philip Cowley, the last time a government found itself third in the polls during an election campaign was as recently as 2010.
Instead, I'm talking about Keir Starmer and the number of people who know that his father, Rodney, was a toolmaker. If you watched the Sky News leaders' event (again, making you something of an outlier) you may recall that the Labour leader was laughed at when he mentioned his father's occupation. Suddenly, the answer seemed like a weakness or more evidence of Starmer's Maybot adjacent communication skills. But that'd be wrong.
A poll for More in Common finds that just 27 per cent of respondents know what Starmer's father did for a living. If that doesn't sound like much, it's actually up from 11 per cent in April. This is important for at least a couple of reasons. First, plenty of people (sometimes rather patronisingly referred to as 'low information voters') assume a gentleman called Sir Keir who is a senior politician must come from money and his dad is a barrister.
Second, and back to my original point, is that this still leaves nearly three-quarters of people having no idea about Starmer's father's profession. This is why politicians and parties repeat messages ad nauseam, whether it be "Long-term economic plan", "Strong and Stable" or "New Labour, New Danger".
Now, this is not always successful. No one believed that Tony Blair was a threat to economic or national security in 1997. But (I think it was Alastair Campbell who said this) it is only when journalists, politicos and campaigners are so sick of a phrase that they want to tear the skin off their own faces that it begins to achieve any sort of cut through with the public.
This being Britain there is, no doubt, a class element to all this. In his excellent biography of the Labour leader, Tom Baldwin writes how Rodney Starmer – who had a complicated relationship with his son – often felt others looked down on him simply because he worked with his hands. One can understand Sir Keir's defensiveness.
Speaking as one of the weirdos myself, I've long been comforted by the fact that it is people for whom politics is not the be-all and end-all that ultimately decide elections. If I had my way, nerds who know the name of the rock band in which Blair was a member (vocals and guitar) during the early 1970s should not even be permitted to live in marginal seats.
