Big news from Southside: in a low-budget remake of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, Sir Keir has been captured, jugulated, and reprogrammed from a Remainer into a committed Brexiteer. In his speech later today, in which he’ll explain how he’ll “make Brexit work”, Starmer will categorically rule out returning to the single market, the customs union, or rejoining entirely. He’ll even say he “couldn’t disagree more” with those in his own ranks – including, erm, the Mayor of London – insisting otherwise:

“There are some who say ‘We don’t need to make Brexit work. We need to reverse it. I couldn’t disagree more. Because you cannot move forward or grow the country or deliver change or win back the trust of those who have lost faith in politics if you’re constantly focused on the arguments of the past […] Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world — it would simply be a recipe for more division.”

Those who voted to leave the EU will be screaming at their TVs ‘where was this from 2016 to 2019’? Six months before the 2019 election, Sir Keir was swanning around telling everyone he backed a second referendum, and would even have advocated for Remain had he successfully helped deliver Jeremy Corbyn the keys to Downing Street. Something his own leadership campaign chair Jenny Chapman later admitted was “a bad idea tbf”…

In July 2019, just after the European elections, he made that position quite clear during an online webinar:

“In the aftermath of the local elections and particularly the EU elections, there are many in the Labour party who feel we need to be very clear about a second referendum and about making the case for Remain… That’s certainly what I’m advocating, discussions are going on at the moment, I hope we can resolve it pretty soon, and that will be a material step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned.”

To be fair, last week Starmer proudly extolled the virtues of changing one’s mind. Going back on every single one of his leadership election pledges, going from a Corbynite to a Blairite in two years and now tearing up his only well-known political belief on EU membership. That, as the metropolitan commentariat will tell us, is real leadership…