By Sir Keir Starmer, prime minister of the UK from 2024-2029
IT seems that, based on polling, I have stumbled into a policy which is popular with the public at large. I promise you that was not my intention.
When I refused to join the US-Israel war against Iran, I did so on the basis that, like everything else I do, it would prove to be exactly counter to the public’s wishes. Initial headlines decrying my cowardice assured me I had done the wrong thing.
My partial U-turn was, as usual, meant to prefigure a full one. This was, as with winter fuel payments, an ideal chance to be badly damaged for a dreadful policy while receiving no credit for later reversing it.
Oddly, that didn’t happen. In fact it seems much of the electorate, contrary to the express wishes of the media, not only remembers the Iraq war but is eager not to repeat it.
Thus I find myself in the uneasy situation of being publicly identified with a policy the electorate supports and my opponents do not. You can imagine my concern.
I take comfort in the words of Donald Trump, who now dislikes me and whose daily criticisms of me are reported verbatim by a breathless press. But it seems even that is not doing me harm, because the average British voter finds him to be a bell end.
What next? I can only hope Labour performs as poorly as predicted in May’s council elections. Otherwise I can see mercenary journalists creating an irresponsible narrative that I’ve ‘turned my time as prime minister around’ and ‘have finally become leader’.
Two years it’s taken me to achieve these rock-bottom approval ratings and it’s all been ruined in one careless moment. I really am as incompetent as they say.
