The Labour Leader Is Up Against Ideas Man Johnson

According to the most recent red-hot thinking on the subject, Keir Starmer made a fatal mistake by trying to “take the moral high ground” with regard to the actual prime minister breaking the actual laws he made, especially when it turns out that he'd eaten some dinner while away from home for work.

- Tom Peck

What he *should* be doing, apparently, is not trying to take the moral high ground, which in this case means obey the law. Instead, he should be winning the Battle of Ideas. He should be coming up with big plans and big policies to beat the Tories. He should be coming up with solutions to the cost of living crisis, to energy prices, to soaring inflation, not just taking the moral high ground. Such a suggestion carried with it the implication that this is somehow harder. That Starmer is resorting to taking the moral high ground because in the Battle of Ideas, he somehow can't compete.

We turn, at this point, to the Queen's Speech, read out by Prince Charles, while sitting on a throne next to a little stool with a crown on, which arrived in its own car, which apparently is some kind of centuries old ritual and not what it very much appeared to be. Which was a wondrously elaborate yet ultimately hopeless scheme through which to conceal the plainly obvious fact that the government hasn't got a clue what to do about anything.

The words "cost of living" appeared in the intro, slotted in right at the top and dutifully read out by Prince Charles while Prince William took his place on the other side of the crown and stared into the middle distance, trying not to look the long decades of his terrifyingly tedious future too closely in the eye.