Keir Starmer recently pointed out that Boris Johnson is a liar and has broken the law, pitching himself once again as a more moral character, an alternative to Johnson.
This seems to be Starmer’s main platform now. He is not Boris Johnson, in the same way Biden’s platform was to not be Donald Trump. It represents, in some ways, our descent as a country into American levels of immaturity.
Protesting too much
Starmer does not commit himself to anything and has broken his pledges. He is in some ways worse than Boris Johnson, because he refuses to apologise or acknowledge any fault, which makes him more like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton than Johnson is. This is a type of person who sells his own moral character as his only redeeming quality, but that product is ultimately a dud.
Boris Johnson broke the law, but is paying penalties accordingly. As such, it is hard to agree with Starmer's calls that he should step down, much less that Starmer himself is the ideal replacement product. The reality is that we let people with power get away with some things, and it will be the same for Starmer if he becomes PM, and he would expect nothing less.
There is no reason to think that the loss of his job, even if it is the top job, is somehow also necessary. Johnson breaking lockdown rules did nothing to mismanage the country. If he did not mismanage the country, as appears to be the case from Starmer’s inability to locate the fault or give any argument other than saying the PM is a knave, then Starmer’s kind of political opposition really has nothing to offer.
Whose fault is this?
We are left with some questions.
Has politics and systemic political opposition in the UK become Americanised, to a point that it now focuses entirely on the character of the Prime Minister and the supposed alternative to him? Are we all going to vote for "not Boris" at the next general election, only to elect a plank of wood?
Whose fault is this deterioration, if it is so? The American political culture affects us, to a large part, thanks to a shared English-speaking media. People cannot be blamed, if their ability to think maturely about politics has been ruined by their consumption of American media and stupid debates that amount to nothing more than name-calling sessions.