‘Silly sod’: Starmer laughs off minister’s Inbetweeners jibe at new MP

Keir Mather (centre) is congratulated by the Labour leadership after overturning a 20,000-vote majority in North Yorkshire. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Sir Keir Starmer has called the government minister Johnny Mercer a “silly sod” who will “soon be history” in politics after he compared Labour’s new 25-year-old MP to a character from the teen sitcom The Inbetweeners.

The minister for veterans’ affairs said Keir Mather had been “dropped into” the Selby and Ainsty constituency and was an “identikit Labour politician”. Earlier he had said: “[Parliament] mustn’t become a repeat of The Inbetweeners.”