WELL, at least we know Keir Starmer has a mum and dad. Mind you, that was never in doubt. Essentially – to save you 90 minutes – neither parent was posh, both worked for a living and each passed on valuable insights about pride in work and the importance of care.

Grand. But did the Labour leader mention their actual names? Was his dad fitba crazy? Where did they come from? As Labour Party supporters, they named their son after Keir Hardie – why not mention that?

Or did that detail not fit the tightly choreographed script of a leader who’s hauled his party to the right and noticeably departed the conference hall before the customary singing of the Red Flag?

Actually, the more the Labour leader carefully emoted about his parents, the more remote and personality-free they became. Ciphers – a bit like the man himself.

And some of his family anecdotes were fairly cringe-making. I didn’t want to be taken to the scene of his mother’s impending demise only to hear that her failing condition meant Starmer couldn’t use his latest legal achievement to impress.

I felt uncomfortable as the story of a young woman stabbed 71 times somehow morphed into a story about his own determination to face the grieving parents John and Penny – who also just happened to be in the audience. Cue standing ovation.

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It felt contrived and vaguely exploitative – but as an independence supporter I’m not the target demographic. If the task was to make Keir Starmer more relatable, the forays into his dad’s craft background were only laboured and baffling. Delegates were willing their leader to find some intelligible punchline after a lengthy anecdote about “having that eye on the object look”. Whit?

Ordinary Sir Keir. There’s the problem, in a nutshell. Sir Keir Starmer will never be ordinary, because he accepted a knighthood. If he thinks gongs are ordinary, the Labour leader moves in more refined circles than anyone hitherto imagined.

And he’s awfy careful to conceal any wee idiosyncrasies – which, ironically, are precisely what voters tend to like. Starmer does get to appear serious and professional compared to the “trivial” Boris. Indeed, at one point, he listed his greatest legal hits, cross-referencing his weighty efforts with ludicrous Boris statements made around the same time. Clearly this was meant to prove that Starmer works hard (presumably in his sleep) whilst Johnson is a lightweight clown.

But the long parade of achievements felt earnest, smug and actually accentuated Starmer’s main weakness when compared with Boris – his technocratic air and relentless seriousness.

Make no mistake. A serious Starmer wins over trivial Johnson in the eyes of most progressive Scots. But I wonder if Red Wall voters forced to choose between Sir Keir in legal action or Boris on Top Gear would have a sneaking admiration for the trivial clown?

Still, Labour members and the wider electorate may forgive the Labour leader’s lofty air if he looks capable of getting Broken Britain back on track. Does he?

After that “must-win” speech – fa kens? There was indeed a checklist of things that need to be fixed but no glimpse inside the Starmer toolbox and therefore no analysis of why Britain has ground to a halt.

The National:

Essentially his argument runs; “Boris is a lightweight who doesn’t make plans. I do.” That’s not nearly enough. Since Labour’s 2019 manifesto has been cheerfully binned, the party currently has no template for HOW Britain will be fixed – evidently not by public ownership.

STARMER promised the most ambitious school building programme ever – but will it be PFI again? He wants energy efficient homes – but will a massive switch away from gas work without a public energy company at the helm? And how can Britain become the world’s “healthiest nation” if Starmer won’t scrap the internal market that’s put the English NHS into private hands? Or end the curse of temporary, insecure outsourced jobs which load stress, poverty and ill health on to tens of thousands of people? Not even a mention.

Starmer said Boris must be asked – “where’s your plan?” But the Labour leader is due a big question too – where’s your analysis? Why is so much wrong in Britain? Just poor planning – really? Is the wholesale privatisation, marketisation and chronic underfunding of English society not worth a mention?

Mind you, Labour delegates seemed to love it – an achievement of sorts. Like Kinnock and Blair in days of yore, Starmer tackled policy areas that haven’t been areas of Labour strength. Clearly the Labour leader likes work – a lot. Indeed, work vied with “dad” as the most mentioned word of the speech – with Starmer suggesting the party’s very name emphasised the importance of gainful employment. Which is all fine, except that on-off decades of Tory rule have created poisonous myths about “work-shy Britain” which Starmer’s language teetered on endorsing.

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His potted history of the industrial revolution in Britain was somehow full of equality and endeavour – not chronically low wages and an inability to vote for longer than the rest of mainland Europe. He also praised the army and its role in Afghanistan and got a standing ovation for declaring “the fight against crime will always be a Labour issue”. “Tough on crime and the causes of crime” started to float through the ether and whilst Blair wasn’t mentioned by name, the most sustained standing ovation followed praise for the “levelling up” achievements of the last Labour government. Starmer has officially brought New Labour back in from the cold after the critical Corbyn years.

This unapologetic shift to the right, emphasis on electability and robust response to hecklers – are we “shouting slogans or changing lives” –visibly delighted delegates.

And yet, to Scottish ears, his big ideas were the political equivalent of dad-dancing. Kinda embarrassing and either spooky – like the doctor and robot working together to get patients home a day early – or last season, like health budgets shifting to (wait for it) preventative spending. The same change recommended by the late Campbell Christie in 2011 and implemented by John Swinney two years later.

Starmer said he was shocked by Boris Johnson’s rejection of Marcus Rashford’s campaign for school meals in England during holidays. But more shockingly Scotland was already quietly providing such meals – the lack of acknowledgement looked either churlish or ignorant to the Scottish eye.

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And all of this – alongside Starmer’s repeated irritating mention of the UK as “a nation” – culminated in the feeble claim that “Britain is more progressive together”. Even pumped-up Labour delegates couldn’t get excited at that one.

So, let’s stand back from the spin. Five days of conference have at least given voters some certainty about Starmer’s direction. No proportional representation under Labour. No public ownership under Labour. No questioning Brexit under Labour. No one person one vote under Labour. If that’s modern, effective or democratic – I’m a Tory.