Boris Johnson has had a better pandemic than Keir Starmer – by a long way

The prime minister, however deficient in personal integrity and so much else, possesses something that Starmer does not have and is not so easily learned, writes Mary Dejevsky

He started not only to recover his brio, but to learn how to parry the lawyer (Anadolu Agency via Getty)

It was sometime last autumn that the thought flashed through my mind. Could it be that the ravages of Covid-19 would, in the end, be of more political benefit to Boris Johnson than to the relatively new leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer? At the time, that was a musing best kept to yourself. Now, as Starmer passes his first anniversary in the job, not so much, perhaps.

There was many a time in the wake of Starmer’s elevation when I had to bite my tongue. His convincing victory in the leadership poll – with more than 56 per cent of the vote – was greeted with huge enthusiasm, especially by well-educated Remain voters who despaired of a party led by the old-fashioned “leftie” Jeremy Corbyn and who welcomed the return of “an adult in the room”. This serious, considered human rights lawyer was seen not just as the antithesis of his predecessor, but of Boris Johnson as well, and a promise of Labour’s salvation.

I had had a lot of time for Starmer when he was director of public prosecutions (although some of his decisions seem more questionable now). As a politician, however, and also as a leader, whose first tasks would be to heal his party’s post-Corbyn wounds and then face down Johnson in the House of Commons – well, I was not persuaded. There is a big difference between being a respected QC making your case in court and winning over not just parliament, but the country. That difference has been increasingly felt, and – like so much – it has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Starmer began with two unsought advantages. His brand of courtroom oratory played better in a Covid-compliant Chamber than Johnson’s hail-fellow approach, which demands an audience. What is more, in the early months he was facing a seriously debilitated prime minister. Johnson has never been as strong a parliamentary performer as he perhaps fancies himself to be, but he was much, much weaker in every respect when he returned, perhaps prematurely, from his bout with coronavirus.

And Starmer was true to type. Like the good lawyer he was, he always turned up for Prime Minister’s Questions well-briefed and prepared, in sharp contrast with Johnson’s early propensity to “wing it”. He won his first encounters all too easily.

But then Johnson started not only to recover his brio, but to learn how to parry the lawyer. And the truth is that it was easier for Johnson to learn how to deal with Starmer than the other way round. Because Johnson, however deficient in personal integrity and so much else, nonetheless possesses something that Starmer does not have and is not so easily learned. He has a gift for communication, a personal authenticity and – the new political buzzword – “relatability”. Johnson’s recorded statement after he was discharged from the hospital has been described by professionals as among the best examples of political communication in recent times.

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The results are before us in the polls. A year after being hailed as the great hope of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer languishes 10 points behind Johnson in the latest YouGov poll, asking which of the two would make the better prime minister; for all the serial disasters of the pandemic, the Conservatives now have a narrow lead over Labour, which is even less popular than Starmer is personally as leader.

As of now, it would indeed appear that Johnson has had a “better” pandemic than Starmer, and by quite a long way. The reversal of the two parties’ fortunes can be dated almost exactly to the (surprised) realisation by voters that the vaccination campaign was succeeding. A government that was blamed for making mistake after mistake for the best part of a year and which presided over a death rate among the highest in the world, had suddenly – or so it seemed – got a grip. With the EU making rather a hash of its vaccine rollout, even staunch Remainers were starting to be disarmed.

But it is not just the success of the vaccine programme that has given Johnson the edge so far. It is his particular political and character traits, too. Having seemed at the outset to be uniquely ill-equipped to lead the government and the country through such a momentous crisis, almost the contrary now seems true. And while voters across the board might not trust Johnson with their cash, or their daughters, they do seem to trust him on what might be termed the “human factor”. We all remember when he warned that we would “lose loved ones before their time”, and I doubt there was anyone, including his avowed enemies, who did not catch their breath when they learned he had been taken into intensive care.

It is understandable that his detractors should deplore the way he is universally referred to as “Boris”, but this is a measure not just of his distinctive name – if anything, Keir has more political resonance – but of how so many people of all walks of life relate to him. He “connects” in a way that Starmer does not. Starmer’s “Sir” also seems to create an added sense of distance, when compared to the familiarity of “Boris”.

As for personal conduct, he has so far appeared almost as Teflon-coated as, say, Bill Clinton or Jacques Chirac or, indeed, his hero, Winston Churchill.

This is how Johnson, quite unfairly, of course, has been able to float largely free above the fray. He has mostly escaped not only personal blame for the high UK death toll, but the fallout from a messy divorce, sordid revelations from a self-confessed mistress that might also entail a conflict of interest, donations from Russian oligarchs, and association with a “chumocracy” that has in part delivered (the vaccines), and has in part not (“track and trace”).

It remains to be seen how the Johnson-Starmer duel will play out in the coming months and how tenable Johnson’s position will be once the inevitable inquiries begin. But it is telling, one year after Starmer became leader of the opposition in a country that is hardly emerging from the pandemic with flying colours, that the rumblings about leadership are not in the ruling Conservative Party – save for Ulster Unionists grappling with the reality of Brexit – but in the newly sanitised, non-Corbyn Labour Party.

Starmer’s job has not been easy. The line between looking responsible and looking weak when agreeing to government-devised emergency measures is a fine one. Should he perhaps have split with the government over the extreme limitations on people’s liberty? Could he perhaps have made more of the divisions among scientists? And now, when he has at last expressed some dissent, questioning the principle of vaccine passports to enter pubs and other venues, he may have chosen the wrong issue. A recent poll suggested that more than 60 per cent of people support such a measure, with only 22 per cent against.

I don’t detect anyone moving to revive Corbynism (yet), but its appeal to some young voters persists, and the return of something akin to a “big state” after the pandemic could make Labour’s job harder still, as Johnson will have stolen half their clothes. Track left, and you bump into Corbyn; track right towards something like Blairism, and you risk having little to differentiate yourself from Johnson’s Tories.

If Johnson emerges from the pandemic in a stronger political position than Starmer, it could be because not only his strengths, but his weaknesses – which would include his inveterate optimism – have equipped him better to overcome this troubled period than the bland rigidity evinced by Starmer.

There will be plenty of nice, highly educated, well-meaning Remainers – who hailed Starmer’s victory and detest Johnson and all his works – who will find that hard to accept. Until they do, though, they will not understand that there are some politicians who can, and some who can’t, and that intellect and personal rectitude may not be enough. It is too early to write Starmer off, but my money, as a non-betting woman, would be on “Boris” to outlast him.