Napoleon was right
Napoleon famously told his generals that it was never a good idea to interrupt your enemy when he was making a mistake. Keir Starmer obviously took this on board, because it is rather difficult to find any coverage of his speech to the CBI yesterday.
Common sense was all that Mr. Starmer needed and it was apparently popular with the audience, but not popular enough to take the media’s attention away from the PM’s car crash. So a perfectly judged speech.
The PM on the other hand was actually embarrassing to watch. Leaving aside losing his place in a 15 minute speech, the PM still managed to be patronising, light weight, frivolous, wrong and pathetic. He didn’t even attempt to give his audience what they wanted to hear and obviously hadn’t even bothered to try.
For any senior politician with years of experience of ad libbing and of winning over audiences of all types, being so offensively lazy and inept that your audience notices is pretty difficult. This PM managed it with ease.
One speech won’t change everything but the reaction of the Tory party to this one is telling.
Deputy heads will roll, this time.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.