None of it is mysterious

Does Keir Starmer know what his political motives are?

Suppose he describes his motives to an interviewer, then on another occasion he describes his political motives to a different interviewer after major national and international events have coloured general political discourse.

It would not be unusual if Starmer’s two accounts of his political motives differ significantly as they were given on two different occasions under different political circumstances.

In which case, what are Starmer’s true political motives?

Suppose two different people each with a different political outlook examine his career to date, but reach significantly different conclusions. Suppose we contrast those two accounts with the accounts Starmer gave to his two interviewers then add two more accounts recently written by two biographers. That would be a total of six versions of Keir Starmer’s political motives, all different.

Again, not particularly remarkable, but what are Starmer’s true political motives? Perhaps it’s an impossible question because he doesn’t have true political motives, his own account of his motives would be coloured by his audience and his need to maintain the personality he finds internally coherent. His account will be coloured by his audience even if he is the audience. It will be no more objective than any of the other accounts.

There is no deeper account of Starmer’s political motives. It’s all there on the surface, the six accounts plus Starmer’s own account. None of them is a true account. There is no true account. What cannot be left out is what we see – the dishonesty, vacillation, pandering to political fashions, going with what is currently mainstream within his social and political peers and the socialist political outlook he grew up with. None of it is mysterious.

This does not imply that we can predict Starmer’s future behaviour as Prime Minister. It does imply that we will probably be able to make sense of it. Those who would like to see a more rational and pragmatic political leader already know he won’t be that. He may not know it but others do. It’s there for anyone to see.

Starmer’s political motives aren’t mysteriously deep, they are there on the surface, visible to all who look. He relies entirely on voters who don’t look.