As if Starmer Chameleon hadn’t done enough U-turns this year. Ahead of his party conference in Liverpool, the Labour leader has defended his decision to write for a newspaper despised in Liverpool and across swathes of the North West of England. Speaking to ITV Granada yesterday, Sir Keir spoke passionately of his collaboration with the Sun newspaper:

I have to make sure that what we have to say is communicated to as many people as possible in the time that we’ve got available. That is why I’m very happy to work with the Sun, to write for the Sun, to do interviews with the Sun…

How very odd. Mr S could have sworn that when running for leader in January 2020, Starmer said the exact opposite at a hustings in Liverpool. He told activists then that ‘this city has been wounded by the media – the Sun … I certainly won’t be giving an interview to the Sun during the course of this campaign’. In a separate campaign video he also made much of his support for the Wapping print unions in their battle against the Sun’s owner News UK. Almost like he’ll change his tune to match the audience…

Keir Starmer attended Rupert Murdoch’s annual party two days ago.

Here’s what he said about the Sun in January 2020. pic.twitter.com/zRRpWuWA3d

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) June 24, 2023

And what about the case of Thangam Debbonaire, Starmer’s media spokesperson? Only a month ago, the Bristol West MP was revealed to have once called for a boycott of the Sun – and the collapse of the ‘whole house of Murdoch’? It begs the question as to who Britain’s best selling tabloid will support at next year’s election.

After all of Starmer’s vocal opposition to Murdoch’s paper in the past, today’s comment was quite the, er, turnaround. Boris Johnson once had a doughnut strategy, based on winning the outer boroughs of London. Now Sir Keir seems to have one too, based on a ceaseless cycle of never-ending U-turns…