Well what a terrible performance by Starmer on the Today programme this morning. Him and his "five missions," fer chrissake. I notice that he's refrained from calling them "pledges," as he knows, we know, and as Amol Rajan certainly knew, that he routinely breaks pledges. He clearly went into the interview determined to bluster his way through the twenty minutes, all big talk but almost entirely without the substance we need in order to understand how he intends to do his "missions." Amol brilliantly pinned him down several times (with very few words), which merely brought on more explosions of bullshit. Notably, Starmer blamed the pandemic and Putin for the fact that he's had to ditch his pledges, but even more notably he lacked the courage to point to the one real thing that is scuppering this country and which is already scuppering his Big Plans, brexit (of course!).

Maybe his Big Speech today will shed more light. I'm predicting that it won't, not much, and that it will be a litany of impossible aspirations. Let's see.

The more I see and hear him, the less confidence I have that he will win the next election.   His ditched pledges, his twists and turns and his inconsistencies, as well as his inability to put clear blue water between him and the Tories (which he could do by promising to negotiate a return to the single market and customs union, the arguments for which are now almost unassailable) will give the the Tories and their media friends a really easy target. All Fishy Rishi has to do is get that protocol sorted and avoid mistakes...

God, I'm miserable...