"For two years the media have treated Keir Starmer with kid gloves, giving him by far the easiest ride of any Labour leader since the early days of Tony Blair.
But they've recently gone after him over the so-called "beergate" scandal, which has clearly got the man absolutely reeling.
His allies have briefed the press that Starmer has been blindsided by the intensity of the criticism, and that the hostility has been "almost beyond his imagination"!
It's utterly absurd to see Sir Keir crying victimhood over a little bit of media hostility, when he knows perfectly well what they did to his predecessor, and how much of an easy ride he's had in comparison for the last two years.
Other Starmer allies have been briefing the press that he's considering a pledge to resign if he ends up getting fined over "beergate".
This proposed resignation pledge would clash horribly with his rhetoric about letting Durham police "get on with their jobs", because it loads a huge amount of pressure onto a small local police force if they know their decision ultimately decides whether the leader of the opposition resigns.
And what happens if Durham Police take the same position that they did on Dominic Cummings' lockdown-busting drive to his (unlawfully constructed) County Durham bolthole, and his absurd driving-eyetest to Barnard Castle?
If they say offenses were committed, but they're not issuing fines because they're don't issue retrospective punishments, what does Starmer do?
Does he resign on principle? Or does he make himself look even more pathetic by clinging onto his position on a ludicrous technicality?
It's absolutely absurd that Starmer witnessed the relentless smears, lies, hostility, and character assassinations aimed at Jeremy Corbyn (Czech spy, Russian stooge, didn't bow deeply enough, Broadband Communist, the "stupid woman" lipreaders, the Anyone But Corbyn coup, plotting a second Holocaust, liked camping and baked beans too much, dancing at the Cenotaph, garden not tidy enough, went to the wrong kind of Seder, unprecedented Stalinist danger and simultaneously totally inept and incompetent ...), assumed that he'd never receive any such hostility himself, and is now having a total meltdown over a bit of predictably hyperbolic tabloid scrutiny over something that he actually did.
Whatever your position on Starmer, on "beergate", or on Britain's right-wing tabloid press, the fact that Starmer's having such a meltdown over a fraction of the hostility his predecessor endured, for years on end, surely suggests that the guy doesn't have the temperament or durability for the white heat of a general election campaign, doesn't it?"
