QUENTIN LETTS: Sir Keir tried to fend off the attacker with one arm – John Prescott needs to give him boxing lessons!
Well played, that security woman. Keir Starmer had just arrived on stage and said ‘thank you’ five times to the applauding delegates when some young idiot ran up and threw glitter over him. Frightening at first. The lanky protester danced around Sir Keir, putting an arm round him while shouting ‘true democracy is citizen-led, politics needs an update’.
Sir Keir, 61, tried to fend off the attacker with one arm – John Prescott needs to give him boxing lessons – but the man was undeterred. Where were Sir Keir’s police bodyguards? It took them a surprisingly long time to react. A female security bod was quicker on the uptake. She sprinted in from backstage left and got to grips with the oaf, as did one of the coppers, who had by now cottoned on.
The protester had just yelled ‘we demand a people’s house’ when he disappeared from view.
From the floor there now came a squawked ‘we are in crisis…we are in crisis’ before his spiel declined into an incomprehensible gurgle, like a telephone dropped into the bath.
Sir Keir, 61, tried to fend off the attacker with one arm after a protester threw glitter over him at the Labour conference in Liverpool
The lanky protester danced around Sir Keir, putting an arm round him while shouting ‘true democracy is citizen-led, politics needs an update’
A second later the security woman dragged him off stage. Shades of a mother grizzly dragging some fresh moose meat back to the bear cave. Wonderful moment.
We later learned that the intruder was trying to make a point about proportional representation. First past the post not his thing, clearly, but he was first into the police paddywagon. There must surely be easier ways to avoid having to sit through one of the nasal knight’s notoriously gluey speeches.
Sir Keir, after his understandable initial shock, handled the moment well. A stage manager told him to lose his much-sprinkled jacket and do the speech in shirt-sleeves. Some glitter was in his hair but no one minded about that. ‘If he thinks that bothers me, he doesn’t know me,’ said Sir Keir.
‘It’s just as well it was me because my wife’s dress is really beautiful.’
Lady Starmer was in the front row, in designer red.
We later learned that the intruder was trying to make a point about proportional representation
A security woman dragged the protester off stage after throwing glitter over the Starmer
Some glitter was in the Labour leader’s hair but no one minded about that
As usually happens – unless your name is Theresa May – the attack helped enormously. Sir Keir was suddenly a hero to the delegates and they didn’t care about the leaden Arsenal joke with which he opened his speech.
For the next hour he quacked away to his heart’s content, emitting great clouds of piffle, but no matter. The headlines were already written: ‘Something Exciting Happens In Starmer Speech!’
Among reporters there was sardonic speculation that the attack must have been a put-up job by Labour insiders. Surely not even Peter Mandelson is that crafty. Talking of Lord Mandelson, I saw him slip backstage shortly before the speech began. He has been much evident in the margins this week.
Sir Keir was given numerous standing ovations, either from rapture or because delegates wished to stand up and stretch their hams to prevent thrombosis.
One of the biggest cheers was for his criticism of Rishi Sunak’s decision to postpone the ban on new petrol cars. ‘I say speed ahead,’ cried Sir Keir. Ban boilers sooner? And yet he said ‘politics should tread lightly on people’s lives’. Baffling.
Lady Starmer was in the front row, in designer red and kissed the Labour leader after he delivered his speech on stage on the third day of the Labour conference in Liverpool
John Prescott, who once punches a protester in North Wales, needs to give Sir Keir some boxing lessons after the Labour leader fended off a protester with one arm
He told us that he went to the Lake District on his holiday (subtext: not California, like moneybags Rishi). ‘The Lake District never lets you down,’ he added. That’s like saying it never rains in Wales.
The speech’s buzz term was ‘Mission Government’, a concept as blancmangey as ‘big society’. The state should be ‘a more powerful engine, not a bigger car. A reforming state, not a cheque-book state.’ Having said that, he indicated he would cave in to doctors’ pay demands.
‘Can we look the challenges of this age squarely in the eye and amidst all the change and insecurity find the hunger to win new opportunities and the strength to conserve what is precious?’
Could the country summon the strength to read sentences like that? Chewier than Barmouth whelks.
The more you think about it, maybe Peter Mandelson did arrange that intruder.
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