U.K. Labour Leader Gets Personal With Attacks on Boris Johnson

(Bloomberg) -- As the new leader of the U.K.’s political opposition, Keir Starmer knows he faces a massive task to win back the trust of the British public and regain power for his Labour Party.

Part of his strategy is to destroy voters’ faith in the man they chose as prime minister last year, arguing that the Covid-19 crisis has proved Boris Johnson is “just not serious” enough to do the job.

In his first speech to Labour’s annual conference -- taking place online due to the pandemic -- Starmer launched a succession of personal attacks on the Conservative leader, seeking to contrast his own career as a public prosecutor with Johnson’s record as a journalist.

“This is the big difference between the prime minister and me,” Starmer said. “While Boris Johnson was writing flippant columns about bendy bananas, I was defending victims and prosecuting terrorists. While he was being sacked by a newspaper for making up quotes, I was fighting for justice and the rule of law.”

The premier’s default setting is to wish away problems or else lash out at people who protest he is failing, the Labour leader said, and “a crisis reveals character like nothing else.”

Johnson has been criticized for his handling of the pandemic and some in his own Tory party believe the government has lost its grip in the crisis, which left the U.K. with its deepest recession for more than a century and the highest death toll in Europe.

“There should be nothing inevitable about a second lockdown,” Starmer said. “It would be a sign of Government failure, not an act of God.”

Starmer was also blunt about his own party’s failings. He said Labour must stop “banging on” about Brexit, stamp out antisemitism, and prove to voters who abandoned it under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership that the party will speak for them again.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.