Back in 2024, the mentally disturbed teenage son of someone we should never ever have taken into the UK, attacked a Taylor Swift themed dance class and with bladed weapons murdered three young girls and injured many others. As is customary following an atrocity such as this there was the obligatory visit by senior politicians to the scene of the attack in order to lay floral tributes.
On this occasion one of the VIP visitors was the freshly elected Labour Party Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer. He came, he laid some flowers and buggered off again. I doubt whether he was at the scene of the floral tributes to the dead and the maimed for more than two minutes before he departed the area.
I recall at the time that there was some public discussion, a lot of it quite negative towards Starmer, about how little time he spent at the memorial for the murdered children of Southport and how he didn’t speak to any one who had either been caught up in this atrocity or were close to those who were. To not stay a decent amount of time to me looked odd.
It looked odd because I can recall Premiers spending a respectful amount of time at disaster sites before going away. Margaret Thatcher spent much more time than Starmer did at Southport at the site of the Hillsborough Disaster. James Callaghan before he was PM and when he was Home Secretary visited Ulster for three whole days to talk to those afflicted by the civil disorder that was occurring in Ulster at that time. John Major visited the victims and relatives of those affected by the Warrington IRA bombing and Harold Wilson was at the site of the Aberfan Disaster within hours of it happening and is said to have spent his time there coordinating with local officials in order to set up an inquiry into the tragedy in order that similar tragedies could be prevented. Following disasters and terrorist attacks there has been a history of Prime Ministers and holders of the Great Offices of State visiting those afflicted and making themselves aware what has happened, comforting those affected and sometimes promising changes. We got none of that with Starmer following the Southport Atrocity. He came, he saw, he chucked down some flowers and went off again. There was also no indication that Starmer had reached out to any of those affected in the immediate aftermath of the Southport Atrocity. It’s like Starmer didn’t want to be there and didn’t want to stand with those who had suffered in this attack.
But Starmer isn’t always so swift to leave or so unwilling to do what Wilson did and do some boots on the ground work or even comfort the grieving and the wounded. There are some occasions and some groups that Kier Starmer doesn’t rush to get away from or where he’s behaved in the perfunctory manner that he showed in Southport.
Recently, Sir Kier made another public appearance and it was similarly high profile to those following disasters. It was a Ramadan Iftar celebration that was taking place in the Palace of Westminster’s Westminster Hall. On this occasion Kier Starmer didn’t put in the sort of brief and perfunctory appearance that he did following the Southport Atrocity. He stayed at this Iftar for ages and made speeches praising Britain’s Islamic community and rather than disappear quickly after making what was a rather toadying speech to the assembled Islamic masses, he hung around and hobnobbed with the others who were there.
This was Two Tier Kier at his most two tier-edness. When faced with with a town whose residents had been the victims of appalling violence at the hands of someone who should have been Sectioned at least, Starmer looks as if he doesn’t give a toss. However, put him in front of a room full of Muslims and he’s Mr Gregarious, giving a speech of epic toadying and glad handing many of the attendees at the Westminster Hall Iftar. Some of these Muslims got more touchy feely than I would feel comfortable with when confronted with a Prime Minister to such an extent that a Bisexual poster on the X platform said of Starmer and his touchy feely guests ‘I wouldn’t let any man touch my arm like that unless we were dating’.
Starmer looked extremely relaxed and comfortable at this Iftar gig although some say that he looked more like a supplicant instead of a Prime Minister and there may well be some truth in that as Labour have consistently pandered to Islamic groups and causes in order to capture this voting bloc. Starmer looked considerably more comfortable at the Iftar gig than he did at Southport. At Southport he looked awkward and clearly eager to get away from an aspect of governance that he’s obviously uncomfortable about, such as meeting and comforting those who have been affected by casualties of disasters and atrocities, which is a sad but necessary duty for a head of government in the UK.
I’m not too keen on heaping guilt on people by association, I’ve seen the Left do this too many times but it may well be possible to gauge a politician’s character by their priorities and their preferences.
Kier Starmer did not prioritise those who had been terribly affected by the Southport Atrocity or at least did not do that with the sort of alacrity shown by Wilson after Aberfan. He did not stay long enough in Southport to make any promises to the residents of this now emotionally shattered town about improving safety as Thatcher did after Hillsborough and he did not swiftly meet those who were most affected by the atrocity as Callaghan did when he visited Ulster.
Starmer did however spend a lot of time at the Westminster Hall Iftar maybe more than he might have spent at Jewish and Christian events?
Starmer by his conduct may have given the impression to the public that he prioritised the Muslims assembled at Westminster Hall over much else that is going on in the UK, such as the growing problem of religious, or rather Islamic, terrorism, the cratering economy and social breakdown. That he did this when there is the possibility that our extremely depleted armed forces might find themselves in harms way because of the blowback created by the war to liberate Iran, also looks quite bad.
Optics in politics matter. Sometimes a politician can do the wrong thing at the wrong time and it reveals something about them. The contrast between his behaviour at the Iftar gig and following the Southport Atrocity could reveal what Starmer cares about and what he doesn’t care too much for. I believe that this is really bad optics for Starmer and I will wait and see just how bad these optics turn out to be and what effects they might have.
I will end this piece with a couple of questions. These questions are: When you see the contrast between Starmer’s behaviour following the Southport Atrocity and how he has behaved at the Iftar event, if the chips were down and the nation’s future was at stake, whose side would Starmer be on? Would it be your side, that of the ordinary Briton and those who’ve thrown their lot in with us, or would it be someone or something else? The problem is hand on heart I’m really not sure.