This is the time in any election campaign when voters engage in selective brain shutdown, viz, when it’s apparent from the observations of anyone being interviewed that they’re not actually talking like a human being but like robots who have been programmed by their respective party HQs on the lines to take in answer to any question. The assumption by the party bosses is that this is the only way to get some simple messages through to voters’ thick heads. Trouble is, within seconds we discern candidates are on autocue, not talking human, and resent it accordingly.
Sir Keir Starmer has that problem all the time. The thing is, his normal diction sounds robotic (one friend suggested that he might usefully join a Welsh Male Voice Choir to teach him modulation) as indeed do his formulaic answers to simple questions. His New Year message (like the Archbishop of Canterbury, but without the same rationale, he gave us a Message) was that he wanted to give us Hope. I think we’ll hear that again.
Starmer's normal diction sounds robotic, as do his formulaic answers to simple questions
But actually, what voters really want isn’t so much hope, thank you, as concrete answers to simple questions about Labour’s programme for office. Admittedly, Rishi Sunak failed to ignite the Thames by promising restrictions on cigarettes, but Sir Keir gives us nothing concrete at all. The hunt is on to find the source of the £28 billion to be invested in the green economy — it may well embrace almost anything, like housing. Indeed, it’s easy to say you’ll stick to iron fiscal rules if you can simply take off balance sheets anything that you can categorise as investment spending.
There are lots of awkward holes in Sir Keir’s programme. Labour wants to make the House of Lords an elected chamber, but doesn’t explain how this doesn’t simply replicate the Commons, another elected chamber. The chilling promise is to sweep away planning restrictions on housing — Angela Rayner dismisses local control as reasons not to put drills in the ground — but you just wait until it’s your area that will be blighted by unsympathetic development. And then there’s immigration: Sir Keir has yet to explain how he actually intends to curb numbers.
The platitudes won’t cut it. We want specifics now, not the promise of Hope.
