Starmer has precisely nothing to offer on immigration

THE general rule of politics that you should never interrupt your opponent when he's busy digging his own grave is one Sir Keir Starmer has taken to heart. Yesterday, his gag at Prime Minister's Questions was: "Christmas is a time of peace on earth and good will to all. Has anyone told the Tory party?" Yes, yes. Quite so.

- Melanie McDonagh

But if we could, just for a moment, drag ourselves away from the faction-fighting in the Conservative Party to contemplate Labour and Sir Keir, who would replace it, the scenario isn't a happy one. On the crucial question that's dominated politics for a whole two weeks, illegal migration, Sir Keir has precisely nothing to offer.

He would scrap the plan to deter illegal migrants by sending them to Rwanda even if- consider this - it turned out to work. And his alternative? We don't know. He toys with the idea of processing migrants abroad, but with nothing so vulgar as actual detail. This matters. The man wants to be prime minister in an election that's a year away, but when it comes to describing what he would actually do if running the country - rather than just opposing government plans to deal with the inexorable number of cross-Channel arrivals - we are left with a big fat vacuum.

What would Sir Keir, PM, look like? Labour is 20 points ahead in the polls so we really should know. Specifically what would he look like on immigration, legal and illegal, the issue that matters most to the Tory voters he has to win over in a real election? There's a little ditty that goes, "Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today./I wish that man would go away." And the man who isn't there is Sir Keir Starmer, PM. We don't know anything of him.