[0762]

Johnson will have been in office for almost two years. His impact on levelling off people's lives and livelihoods has been on the slender side and negligible. His administration is intellectually bankrupt and will be proved ultimately to have been astonishingly and casually corrupt - one would think he'd eventually be unveiled as a "naked emperor" even to the most shortsighted of voters. And yet Starmer has hardly touched Johnson in the popularity stakes even now! Starmer is "cut from a different cloth". Well read, earnest, not at all devoid of decent instincts. However, I must mention the "Scotland element" in which he has previously intimated a notion that he can rescue Scotland from the actions of a truly immoral Westminster regime - risible albeit for different reasons compared with the independence movement! There was already a mountain of Nevis proportions to climb in winning enough Tory held seats to claw back power. When you have trouble hanging on to your own tribesfolk, that task is virtually impossible. We've seen this movie before up here - the speed with which Labour support haemorrhaged in Scotland was dizzying and the election result of 2015 pretty well jaw dropping for victors as well as vanquished. Also it doesn't help that Scottish Labour too suffers from selective deafness when it comes to the significant opinion of their membership. Their polling ought to tell them that shedloads of their own troops don't care to be told to stay in bed with uncle Boris until uncle Keir can locate a route back to power.