How could anyone begrudge Keir Starmer a post-sacking pint?

In life, there are some pints that just hit different. 

The quick pint you drink at the Indian while they finish boxing up your order for you to take home. The lazy one on the holiday balcony while your Mrs finishes doing her makeup before you go out for dinner. 

The 8am Airport pint you force down before jumping on a Jet2 flight to somewhere hot.

All of these are recognisably brilliant pints, just typing them out made me feel a certain level of ease and decompression, that kind of peace that comes only from enjoying a continental lager in perfect circumstances. 

But surely none of them trumps the pint that Keir Starmer was pictured with yesterday.

I’ve had some belters in my time, but I’m confident nothing will ever taste as good as a ‘just being bombed out of Downing Street after my reign as Prime Minister was cruelly ended’ pint. 

The now ex-PM handed over the keys to No10 to Andy Burnham and immediately headed for one of his favourite local boozers, necking a few cold ones and saying farewell to aides. 

The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise Starmer, but honestly, after six years of watching him try and fail to look like an average bloke, he’s never been more relatable to me than he was yesterday. 

Opinions on Sir Keir’s two year premiership will of course be mixed, to put it kindly,  and I doubt that even his most ardent supporters would argue it was a perfect 24 months in charge of the country.

But having resigned 4 weeks ago under relentless pressure from within the Labour Party, for my money he left with a certain level of dignity – as soon as Burnham won in Markerfield to become an MP, he filed his resignation and began the process of leaving office, rather than doing a Boris and trying to cling on to the door of Downing Street. 

So I had a bit more respect for him than I used to even before I saw a newspaper publish pictures of Starmer and some of his colleagues drinking outside of a pub.

The journalist behind the story tweeted  ‘Fair Play’ and that was the consensus even among those who had previously opposed Starmer. 

‘Relatable’, ‘you would do the same’, ‘respect’, ‘he’s just like me’ was the consensus, even among some of his fiercer left-wing critics. 

Others, however, have been less favourable in their reading of the situation, with plenty of right wing voices piling  onto the former PM for enjoying what seems to be a cask ale in the sunshine (I’d have gone with a strong IPA myself, but no one is perfect). 

GB News presenter Ben Leo was particularly fierce, posting ‘Kicked out of government and then off to the pub for a laugh and a giggle. All while the country remains crippled 

‘Glad to see they’re having a good time.’

Quite apart from the general fun sponge behaviour, it’s ironic to see a swipe at Starmer’s post-work bev from a channel that has continually boosted Nigel Farage, who should, at least according to them, be lauded for performatively spending so much of his crypto donations on cask ale in a lazy attempt to come across as some kind of everyman.

The truth is that one of Starmer’s key failings as prime minister, outside of appointing Mandelson or accepting freebies, is that the British public never really connected with him. 

Even as an opposition leader, it always felt as though his guard was up, he was doing his best to show us the version of him that he wanted us to see, we couldn’t really relate to the man.

Like the time he was asked his favourite film, and he panicked and replied ‘The Traitors’ or his appearance on the anorak-friendly ‘Football Cliches’ podcast, where he said the thing he most enjoys about the sport is ‘goals’. 

He was too cautious, and too stiff, and never relatable. 

Until yesterday. 

Because what’s more relatable than, after a fairly hellish 6 months, slipping into your local boozer after a long day for a quick pint? 

In the images, Starmer is speaking into his mobile, and many of us will have been in a similar situation, phoning home, pretending that something is keeping them an extra hour at the office, asking others to be quiet and not give the game away, promising to bring home a takeaway to keep the peace.  

If holding a pint of real ale is enough to humanise Farage, an ex city trader already worth plenty of money but who appears to accept millions like he’s being offered a crisp, should we not let the 5-aside playing season ticket holder have a swift one on a hot day before he heads home to his family? 

After 2 years of doubting how ‘real’ he is, of not being able to relate to him, of Starmer having to painfully remind us that he’s an average bloke, how ironic that on his final day he does the most British thing of all. 

That’s not to say this whitewashes the mistakes he made in government. 

His replacement, Andy Burnham, already seems more at ease, having spent the last few weeks having his team post social media content where he picks his favorite albums, dotes over his football team and generally looks like a normal 6 Music dad. 

Maybe he will prove to be a more relatable leader than Starmer, or maybe the constraints of this office mean any sense of normality is simply impossible. 

But in this unposed moment, in his local with a beer in hand, it feels churlish to pick holes in Starmer, or begrudge him on what must be one of the best-tasting pints he’s ever had.

We can criticise him and his legacy, but just for a day, he finally looked like one of us. 

Cheers, Keir.

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