THE mask has slipped. Sir Keir Starmer KC has outed himself once and for all as a slippery, full blown, double-dealing, fork-tongued chancer.
The man who would be our PM is the classic political opportunist who will say and do anything to win power and then — at the slightest hint of resistance — say and do exactly the opposite.
Or to cite comic legend Groucho Marx: “These are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.”
In a single week, Starmer has performed backflips over self-ID, Ulez and child benefit — major issues on which, a few days earlier, he was staunchly resolute.
With bewildering speed, he joined JK Rowling, enraged the trans lobby and admitted a woman is indeed “an adult human female”.
He still thinks “some women have penises”, but even Sir Shifty can see what undecided voters make of such nonsense.
He then threw a hissy fit over London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s penal £12.50-a-day Ulez charges which cost Labour the Uxbridge by-election.
“We are doing something wrong if policies from the Labour Party end up on every Tory leaflet,” he said, with childlike innocence.
Finally, he infuriated his entire party with a screeching U-turn on social security hand- outs, rejecting ruinous calls for unlimited child benefit, a policy he previously supported.
And, as Groucho might say, I have others.
Look at his tricksy tap-dancing over Brexit and his secret plan to rejoin the EU.
Will he block illegal immigration or reopen the floodgates?
Does he back the banks who tried to ban Nigel Farage?
Or does he believe in free speech and the right to hold a bank account? We on The Sun know the answer to that.
But for many, Starmer’s deafening silence during those heady days when Jew-baiting Jeremy Corbyn seemed on the brink of power tells you all you need to know about this political plodder.
At no point in four years as Corbyn’s right-hand man did Starmer denounce Labour’s anti-Semitism or its shabby treatment of such Jewish MPs as Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman.
When Ellman provided evidence of abuse in her own constituency, Starmer retorted: “I don’t accept that.”
Indeed, it was only after he took over as party leader in 2020 and sacked Corbyn, along with the former leader’s ex-love Diane Abbott, that Starmer announced his wife, Victoria, was Jewish.
Telegraph journalist Zoe Strimpel, herself Jewish, described the purge as an attempt by Starmer to make up for his “arguably craven years” at Corbyn’s side.
How long would Starmer have kept silent as a minister in Corbyn’s government?
Indeed, Sir Shifty’s entire career seems to involve ducking bullets, dodging blame and dumping promises.
Some say he is imitating former Labour PM Tony Blair, now acting as Starmer’s backseat driver. But that is unfair.
Blair frequently took decisions which angered unions, his own MPs and even the voters.
He would rather put up with sticks and stones than be seen to cut and run and look weak.
Whatever you think of the Iraq War, he never blinked.
Indeed it was Blair, not Starmer, who last week dared challenge the Green mob and its insane 2050 deadline for Net Zero.
Sir Shifty wobbles like a weathervane and waits for the next opinion poll.
How would he cope with an economic crisis, a row with Brussels or the risk of war with Russia?
The Tories have seized on this failure of nerve as a vote winner.
PM Rishi Sunak told The Sunday Telegraph: “I’ve done the job for just over eight months and I get to see him every week.
“The more I do it, the less I understand about Keir Starmer and the Labour Party’s views on anything.
“I have a set of principles and values that anchor my approach to life and to government.
“I don’t see that across the despatch box. Every week you get a different position.
“He is quite happy to jump on whatever bandwagon is coming along, to whatever headline or poll he has seen the week before, and I think people see that.”
