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@h2o
Tangential but quite a lot in this that I think relates to how political appeal is perceived here:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/william-davies/the-reaction-economy
Starmer isn’t very good at emoting for the camera. Clearly, from his resumé, he’s a man with a brain, with principles, and with motivations - you may disagree with them, or with his policies, but claiming he’s a somehow a cardboard cutout of a human being is just playground childishness. But yes - he’s not good at emoting for the camera, and we as a culture are addicted to seeing people emote on camera.
Given how painfully vapid a lot of Corbyn’s rhetoric is - until you mull over what he is leaving out and realise that he has massive and unforgivable blind spots around anti-semitism and Russian imperialism - I do wonder if part of his appeal was how well he played the part of the avuncular university lecturer who would encourage you to make an intellectual leap by raising an expectant eyebrow. All the fanboy gifs of him giving a little nod come to mind.
Anyway. I don’t think Starmer is Labour’s Mahdi/Messiah come again to lead the party and the UK into the land of milk and honey. I do think he’s a decent man trying to make the party electable again - and, judging from the polls (newsflash! Pollsters learn from their mistakes and improve their methodologies), he’s doing a reasonable job of that. That, and the short time until the next GE means that he’s best chance we have this electoral cycle of ending over a decade of Tory economic mismanagement and destruction of public services- which has to be the immediate priority of anyone on the left, I’d have thought.