Does it matter that Starmer punches like a girl?

One of the funniest videos I’ve seen for a while, and one which keeps popping back into my head whenever I’m feeling down in the dumps, is of Sir Keir, boxing gloves donned, limply attacking a defenceless punching bag.

To call the punches he throws ‘pathetic’ would be generous in the extreme. There are many epithets I can think of, few of which are publishable in 2025, but which would have been standard fare on any playground before the Great Modern Woke Revolution. Most of them call into question the masculinity of the subject in question, suggesting perhaps that he may be a member of the rainbow coalition.

Indeed, I have a seven-year-old niece who I firmly believe could deliver a heartier swing than our Prime Minister can muster. Moreover, my five-year-old nephew displays levels of ferocity which make him look like Rocky Balboa compared to the Toolmaker’s Son’s flaccid bitch-hits.

For a while I have been wondering why this video has had such a lasting impression on me. Scarcely a week goes by in which I don’t think of Sir Keir’s ferocious exertions, flailing wildly like a particularly meek, blind kitten.

Firstly, there is the straightforward hilarity of the stupid modern politician, who, desirous to make zemself one of hoi polloi, goes somewhere improbable like a gym or a pub to try and rub shoulders with the common folk. It is about as preposterous as it gets and a crystallisation of our stage managed, deceitful politics.

That said, such trips needn’t be inauthentic: Trump’s brief flirtations with working in McDonalds and as a refuse collector showed that, if the person involved has even a modicum of authenticity, such jollies can prove wildly successful and endearing.

It is when, however, the visitor has as much genuine interest in being there as going to the doctor to have an unusually large and discontent haemorrhoid dealt with that the absurdity shines too far through.

Secondly, I cannot help watching it and feeling utterly dismayed at Starmer’s lack of masculinity. This is not to say that I am some kind of steroided megaman hitting the gym on a constant basis, but to see our Dear Leader quite so publicly display his utter feebleness speaks to something wider.

Western society has become decidedly emasculated. I do not think that our leaders should be punch-drunk boxers or underworld, bald-headed hard nuts – that is the way of the failed state pretending to be a ‘democracy’ (pot, kettle, black) – but I want to know that, at the very least, our leader would not curl up like a hedgehog if even a moment’s threat reared its head.

To readily confront challenges is a trait daily growing in importance amid the rapid rise of Realpolitik after decades of progressive wishful thinking. Operating on this level does not necessarily require one to be able to throw an actual punch, but it does demand that one can carry out its intellectual equivalent: this is why the world has shifted so dramatically in favour of Trump, Putin and Xi and away from the delicately manicured grasp of the likes of Macron, Trudeau and Starmer.

That said, like any true coward, he is happy to risk the lives of others in pursuit of self-aggrandisement. Despite having an armed forces which would struggle to defend Rutland, let alone the vast Steppe of Ukraine, he is willing to send troops into harm’s path in Eastern Europe. Prancing around in spot of camouflage (but not the trousers - that would be too much!), he presumably imagines himself recast as a Wellington or Montgomery, whereas, in fact, he looks like an accounts manager at a mid-sized provincial firm off for an afternoon’s paintballing.

No mixed rig, Sir!

This dearth of strength and courage is not to say, of course, that Sir Keir does not enjoy power. No doubt he loves it, and it is the driving force of his existence: his fervour for its acquisition is what has elevated this otherwise highly mediocre man to such an absurdly over-elevated position.

He lusts, nevertheless, after a kind of power not earned through peers’ respect or via wide recognition of talent. Conversely, it is the kind of power that is imposed over others: it is the overbearing hand of the communist commissar or the Stasi agent.

He seeks power bestowed by fiat. He is the kind of man who’d have sat in the Black Maria in Soviet Russia, knocking unwelcomely on doors in twilight hours to whisk opponents away. This is why he cannot speak in any other language that of rules and compliance. His rigid mind is stuck on the narrow-gauge tracks of ideological strictures.

Being wedded to such superstructures precludes the possibility of being courageous as it renders almost impossible the independence of thought necessary for bravery. It is the mindset of checklists and flow-charts, of utter absence of innovation.

When one thinks of great leaders, their willingness to embroil themselves in physical or intellectual melees is invariably what springs to mind. Think of Churchill: from his madlad youth of Lord Flashheart-esque escapades to stubborn defiance of the dastardly Germans in 1939: Starmer is as far removed from such strength of character as can be – he is so devoid of spirit that he claims not even to have a favourite book.

That’s more like it!

Or take Maggie who stuck two fingers up at Buenos Aires in protection of British territory, whereas Starmer is desperate to parcel off strategically important islands for no good reason whatsoever.

In having this narrow mind lacking an animating spirit, Sir Keir is not alone. There are many such types who litter history’s less auspicious pages. When a society is functioning well, their genus is generally confined to roles in petty bureaucracy or administrative tasks of such mind-bending tedium that only automata can carry them out.

In societies with serious dysfunction, however, such people rise to the top.

That we are burdened with such a dreadful person atop our political structure tells you everything you could need to know about the state of Britain today. Sir Keir can’t throw a punch, and therefore it is no surprise that Britain, at present, couldn’t punch its way out of a wet paper bag.