Starmer's school of hard Enochs

COULD an Oxford-educated lawyer and human rights barrister actually employ offensive, even bordering on racist, language?

- NICK FERRARI

Last week proved “stranger” things have happened, when three words you'd never have thought possible came out of Sir Keir Starmer’s mouth.

Phrases cling to PMs as ivy does to the walls of their prime ministerial retreat at Chequers. In Margaret Thatcher's case it was five words, “The lady’s not for turning.” For Tony Blair it was just four, “Weapons of mass destruction.”

This gaffe-prone Premier has got it down to three! “Island of strangers.”

A sentence no script writer should have considered, let alone committed to print, and Sir Keir’s supposedly forensic mind should have expunged with a thick red pen as soon as his lawyerly eyes fell upon it and before he was accused of a near-echo of the words of Enoch Powell.