“Zero charisma!” Labour in ‘trouble’ as Keir Starmer’s interview with Piers didn’t help
The Express
Sir Keir Starmer believes he is “turning the party around” as he said Labour needed to stop looking inwards to make inroads to electoral success. But brand and PR guru Mark Borkowski outlined the big problems the Labour leader is facing. He suggested that the timing of the interview indicated to him that his party are “in trouble”.
Speaking to talkRADIO, Mr Borkowski said: “The problem with Keir Starmer is he doesn’t connect to people and he has zero charisma.
“I think he has the personality of a supply teacher, probably a geography supply teacher and this is what the panic is.
“When we looked at Hartlepool and the other recent elections, that is a real indication of no connection.
“People don’t go anywhere near him and television is not his medium that’s a big problem.
“The bottom line is I was surprised to some extent that he was doing the Piers Morgan Life Stories because it’s one of those interviews you give at a very crucial time like running for an election.
“It indicated to me that they’re in trouble with him and they would do anything to get him to be someone the public think he is.”
The Labour leader was presented with the analysis of former prime minister Tony Blair, who said the party needed a “total deconstruction and reconstruction”.
And asked by Morgan whether that was advice he needed to listen to, in a clip released ahead of the full programme on Tuesday, Sir Keir said: “Yes.
“The biggest change we need to make is a Labour Party that stops looking in on itself and looks out to the electorate, to the voters.
“I’m going to go and talk across the country this summer to people who are no longer voting Labour and hear for myself what they have to say and show that reconnection.”
Sir Keir said the three things which would describe a Britain under his leadership would be “pride in our country, dignity… dignity for children growing up, dignity at work, and change”.
And he said already he was proud of his work to rid anti-Semitism from the party.
“We had to make changes, so on things like anti-Semitism, it was really important to me and to the party, I think, to the country that we dealt with anti-Semitism,” he said.
“We’ve begun to do that, taken some really, really important steps. We’re turning the party around.”
In a second clip released ahead of the interview, he spoke about taking time out from his leadership campaign early last year to support his wife Victoria, suggesting it was an example of him putting his family before politics.
Asked whether he was a romantic, Sir Keir said: “I think probably yes.”