STEPHEN GLOVER: Keir Starmer is engaged in a gigantic deception against voters, so why won't Rishi take the fight to Labour leader? What's he got to lose!
How tough is Rishi Sunak? Tough enough to resign as Chancellor in July 2022, and bring about the demise of his patron, Boris Johnson.
Yet during this campaign Mr Sunak hasn't been tough. He has been resilient and industrious but has failed, like his party, to grip the main issue of the election: Sir Keir Starmer.
When the PM set the process in motion four weeks ago, I had my doubts about timing. Wouldn't it have been preferable to wait until the autumn, when the economy will be stronger? Nonetheless, I welcomed the prospect of Mr Sunak going head to head with the Labour leader, and illuminating his astonishing inconsistencies.
He hasn't done so. Sir Keir may have been exposed as a furtive tax-raiser who is planning to whack the better-off — and very possibly not-so-well-off — with higher capital gains tax and property taxes.
But that's only part of it. The bigger picture is Sir Keir himself. No major political leader in modern times has changed his mind so often in so short a period. He is a weather vane of a politician, veering from hard-Left to soft-Left to hard-Left and back to soft-Left again. Rishi has shown little interest in these amazing gyrations.
How tough is Rishi Sunak (pictured)? Tough enough to resign as Chancellor in July 2022, and bring about the demise of his patron, Boris Johnson
Yet during this campaign Mr Sunak hasn't been tough. He has been resilient and industrious but has failed, like his party, to grip the main issue of the election: Sir Keir Starmer (pictured)
People may forgive Sir Keir for his Trotskyist views in his 20s when, by his own recollection, he was a republican. If we were all to be hung for things we said and did as young adults, there would be gibbets all over the land.
As he became a successful barrister, Starmer edged Rightwards, and by the time he became Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008 had moved to the soft-Left. That is how he was billed when elected an MP in 2015.
Yet he cheerfully joined the shadow cabinet of the new hard-Left leader, Jeremy Corbyn, though moderate Labour MPs such as Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Rachel Reeves declined to do so. When Corbyn was challenged for the leadership in 2016, Starmer disowned him — only to rejoin the shadow cabinet after the grizzled old booby had seen off the attempted putsch.
For the next three years Starmer was a loyal Corbynite. He didn't oppose the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Nor did he question the higher taxes proposed in the party's 2017 and 2019 manifestos. He was a fellow traveller of the hard-Left. He even described Corbyn as his 'friend', an encomium seldom uttered by one politician about another.
In one area — Brexit — he went further than his leader, and championed a second referendum, which was an attempt to repudiate the largest democratic vote in our history.
Why doesn't Rishi challenge him on this vast intended betrayal when they meet tonight in a debate with other leaders, and next Wednesday when the two of them will be alone? I hope the PM hasn't been advised never to mention Brexit.
In 2019, as we know, Labour went down to its most abject defeat since 1935. Now Sir Keir seeks to distance himself from this debacle by saying he knew that the party would lose. Why, then, did he campaign so enthusiastically for a Labour victory?
I don't believe him. I think he's trying to find an excuse for having supported Jeremy Corbyn. It's a dishonourable ploy. He claims to have had no faith in the policies he once advocated. What kind of man admits that?
The duplicities continued. When he stood for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2020, Starmer did so on a platform that was virtually Corbynite, advocating the scrapping of student tuition fees and the 'common ownership' of most privatised industries.
Once elected, the new Labour leader embarked on yet another change of political course, ditching most of his commitments, and trying to make himself attractive to disenchanted Tories. Perhaps the culmination of this insincere love dance was a newspaper article last December in which he affected to admire Margaret Thatcher.
Here's a question — and one that Rishi and the Tories should be asking if they had any gumption: why should voters have any confidence in Labour's 2024 manifesto given that Sir Keir has torn up the manifesto on which he was elected leader of his party only four years ago?
The man is a serial chameleon. No, that is a slur on chameleons. What does he really believe? Does he believe in anything other than the acquisition of power by any means?
What has Rishi to lose? As things stand, he's likely to go down as the prime minister responsible for the worst Tory defeat in history
The economist John Maynard Keynes famously said: 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?' Of course we all change our minds, and may not even be entirely sure what we think about some things. But Sir Keir Starmer's mind-boggling inconsistencies are of a different order.
If he were 25, one might forgive him for chopping and changing so much. But he's 61. In his 50s he zigzagged around the political track in both directions. A man should have settled beliefs at such an age if he is to command trust and respect.
Except, it seems, if he wants to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Is it possible that voters hate the Conservative Party so much that they don't care whom they choose to replace it? They resemble householders who want to get rid of a rogue builder who has overcharged and botched the job. It doesn't occur to them that the chap who turns up at the front door with a sledgehammer in his hand might be far worse.
And yet there are clues that some people entertain doubts about Sir Keir. His personal ratings, though far better than Mr Sunak's, are not as stellar as they should be, in view of his party's huge lead in the polls. One recent YouGov survey suggested that one in three hold a favourable view of the Labour leader but around half still have a negative opinion.
There are hints elsewhere of misgivings. At last week's leadership debate in Grimsby, the audience tittered after a questioner said that Sir Keir 'was more like a political robot'. On Nick Ferrari's LBC show on Tuesday, there were several sceptical listeners. Unsurprisingly, they were met with the usual wall of Starmer waffle.
Why won't Rishi and other Tories take the fight to the Labour leader, and dwell on his hard-Left past, his opportunism and his lack of enduring principle? You'd think that such weaknesses were a gift to them, but they won't take it.
Mr Sunak was prepared to plunge the knife in Boris's back and yet is reluctant to go for his opponent's jugular. Surely, if you crave the top job, you must be able to show political aggression. Sir Keir Starmer is engaged in a gigantic deception against the British public — and the Tories are letting him get away with it.
What has Rishi to lose? As things stand, he's likely to go down as the prime minister responsible for the worst Tory defeat in history. It may not be too late if he fights. At worst he will be defeated with honour.
The evasive, opaque, endlessly politically mutating Sir Keir Starmer is the biggest issue of this election. Let's address it at last.
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