As I noted in the previous thread that looking at the supplementary questions in polls are often much more useful pointers than headline voting intention figures and this is another supplementary that caught my attention in light of the pandemic and the UK having such appalling death figures related to Covid-19.

During, what one hopes is, a once in a century pandemic Labour would hope their leader would be the person best equipped to hold the government to account. Instead we have a twenty-three year old footballer, and Piers Morgan, man who was Britain’s most unpopular person after he published fake news about British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, seen as people being able to hold the government to account better than the Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

Perhaps this is a deliberate strategy by Starmer, in Andrew Rawnsley’s column this morning there was this engrossing observation.

One Labour frontbencher tells me: “In our focus groups, the more we attack the government, the more people don’t like it.” The accusation that the government has been too slow to take measures to control the virus resonates with the public because they largely agree. “Anywhere else you attack them, you have people saying, ‘That’s not fair.’”

Sir Keir Starmer is a successful former Director of Public Prosecutions so he is used to holding people to account so it is probably a deliberate strategy by Starmer.

Starmer’s life cannot have been made any easier by the behaviour of the European Commission, who it appears have hired Chris Grayling and Gavin Williamson to run the EU’s vaccine procurement and rollout programme, which has shown how well the government has done on its vaccine strategy.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom for Starmer, Ben Walker, the founder of Britain Elects, has done a very well researched piece, and it says Starmer is doing fine for a leader of the opposition who goes on to become Prime Minister.

When Piers Morgan, yes PIERS MORGAN, is seen as doing a better job on holding the government to account then Starmer needs to improve, as we say in Yorkshire, Keir, pull tha’ bloody finger out.

TSE