BUT THEN HE CAN’T REALLY SAY if he’s strictly an optimist or a pessimist and, no, doesn’t know if he’s an extrovert or an introvert, either. “I’ve never really thought about it. I don’t know what that tells you.” He doesn’t know what he dreamed last night – or ever: “I don’t dream.” Just hits the pillow at 11 and – “bang” – is out till around 5. He doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem, wasn’t scared of anything as a child. “Nothing. No phobias.” Hmmm, this is harder than I thought. Quickfire is perhaps not his format.
He will be more relaxed and expansive in our second interview a week later when, sun-glazed from the Normandy beach, he will tell me about the D-day commemorations where he stayed the whole day and Rishi Sunak did not. Like Gordon Brown’s mutter of “bigoted woman”, Theresa May’s dementia tax, Richard Nixon’s sweaty top lip, the D-day debacle will mark a shift in the campaign. Starmer will lean back on his office sofa, put his hands behind his head and reveal his shirt underarms – impressively dry for a Friday of meltdown news. He will say he’s thought about my questions and has something to tell me.
But a week is an eternity in politics and so today, in Scotland, he’s still cautious of tripwire headlines. Who can blame him? At 20 points ahead with a hostile media, he has everything to lose. So, he tiptoes around the question of Downing Street, caveats any mention with “if we get that far”; “we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves”.
In the weeks that I tail Starmer, I observe him give speeches, meet voters, work sleeves rolled up on the train. I see him chuckle, drop the F-bomb, crack jokes about Ed Balls. His suits get sharper; he acquires new specs; more clay is swept through the concrete hair. I notice that when he’s cross, his ears redden. Stressed, he has a face like a slammed front door. The snap election explodes plans for me to accompany him to his favourite tandoori, to witness the blow as Arsenal finish the season as runners-up. Winning is everything for Starmer, those close to him say. In football, in life, in politics.
And unless the nation has colluded in one giant lie to opinion pollsters, Labour is set to take power with a majority so zinging, it will eclipse even Tony Blair’s. A victory so epic that Tories have been begging voters not to deliver what Grant Shapps calls a “supermajority” and install what the Daily Mail fear is a “one-party socialist state”.
What’s odd, then, is
