Sir Keir Starmer is dull and uninspiring. His contrast with the PM presents a massive opportunity for the Conservatives

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BY JAMES YUCEL

22 hours and 17 minutes. That’s how long it took Jeremy Corbyn to retweet a crackpot, after stepping down as Leader of the Labour Party. The privately-educated 70-year old shared a tweet that read “there’s no person I’d rather be PM during a global pandemic than Jeremy Corbyn”, demonstrating to the crowds once again his extraordinary sense of modesty.

Succeeding the Islingtonian multi-millionaire is a procedure-obsessed, anti-Brexit, Knight of the Realm, hardly the the type of character most likely to re-establish the party’s credentials in areas like Workington and Stoke-on-Trent. Whilst Labour’s working class vote seems likely to continue to bleed away, it has in recent times always been able to rely on one core demographic. My demographic – young people. The question is: will that now last?

Last December, a whopping 56% of young people voted to put Diane Abbott in charge of the security of this country. This can be attributed to Labour’s relentless social media operation, coupled with their deliberate misinformation campaign. Out of pure fear that Boris would ‘sell the NHS’ or sheer hope that Labour would ‘scrap tuition fees’, many young people were prepared to set aside their progressive principles and cast their ballot for an institutionally racist party.

That could all be about to change.

The cold hard truth is, Sir Keir Starmer is uninspiring. I mean, really, really, uninspiring – and his stodgy, soft-left, lawyerly, Miliband-lite politics is not what the under 24s are looking for. Young people and students need a cause, something to excite them! And sadly for the Labour Party: the radical trailblazer needed to ignite such a movement is not Sir Keir Starmer QC.

In 2010, around 30% of young people voted for the Conservatives. As bouncy, sunny, inspiring Boris skyrockets in the polls, and Labour retreats further into its elitist identitarian comfort zone, now is the perfect time for our party to start reaching out again to younger voters.

Sir Keir Starmer’s election could be about to usher in a bold new era in youth politics – for Young Conservatives.

James Yucel is a writer and young Conservative activist who has written for The Glasgow Guardian, and was a campaign officer for Tom Hunt MP. Follow him on twitter: @JamesLYucel