OPINION

       Keir Starmer's supposedly forensic mind missed something (Image: Getty)

       Could an Oxford-educated lawyer and human rights barrister actually employ offensive, even bordering on racist, language? Last week proved ‘stranger’ things have happened, when three words you’d never have thought possible came out of Sir Keir Starmer‘s mouth. Phrases cling to PMs as ivy does to the walls of their Prime Ministerial retreat at Chequers. In Margaret Thatcher’s case it was five words, “The lady’s not for turning.”

       For Tony Blair it was just four, “Weapons of mass destruction.” This gaffe-prone Premier has got it down to three! “Island of strangers.” A sentence no script-writer should have considered let alone committed to print, and the supposedly forensic mind of Sir Keir should have expunged with a thick red pen as soon as his lawyerly eyes fell upon it.

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       As his top team scrambled to defend him, just imagine this scenario: if it had been Nigel Farage who’d coined that phrase.

       Exactly! Utter pandemonium with a shower of virtuous condemnation of such base and tasteless comments and the suggestion “only” Farage would use such an expression.

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       PMQs: Farage praises Keir Starmer's immigration speech

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       Indeed, when I asked Cabinet “Enforcer” Pat McFadden that very question on my LBC breakfast show, all he could offer in lame defence was: “Well… it would depend on the context of the sentence.”

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       Really! So it’s possible to construct a sentence where that doesn’t jump out at you like a galloping horse? But the answer to what made this North London chattering class human rights champion of the Left veer across the political highway to the extreme Right is simple and contained in just one word.

       And it’s the one that can be attached to his attempts to change migration policy: reform. But make that Reform – with a capital R. Because Nigel Farage has done it again and this wily 'fox in the box' of British politics has disturbed another comfy political henhouse which has promptly shown they’re 'chicken' about the challenge.

       The PM’s "re-set" on migration was a bizarre spectacle, as we were expected to sign up to the nonsensical notion that when it comes to migrants, our bespectacled and nasal knight of a PM had morphed into Clint Eastwood. “Go on migrant, make my day!”

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       The grim truth for him and his team was his stance wasn’t good, but was extremely bad and even ugly. And what had led to this Damascene conversion?

       Again a question I put to another of his top team the day after the shambolic speech, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. How had he come from saying, when seeking election as Labour leader “we welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them… we have to make the case for the benefits of migration, the benefits of free movement” to his current position?

       Her response was described by one newspaper as “completely indecipherable” and “a hopeless mush of noise.” Which pretty much sums up the whole Government's stance on this and why the PM has turned into this 'Stranger of a Knight'.