Starmer’s slip-up shows how little he cares about Israel’s hostages

The Prime Minister’s call for a ‘release of the sausages’ was more than just an unfortunate slip of the tongue – it was unforgivable

This time last week, I was in Israel interviewing the mother of a hostage. On the morning of October 7, Meirav Gonen spent four hours on the phone with 23-year-old Romi.
She talked her through her fear at 6.30am when rockets started landing on the site of the Nova festival where Romi and her best friend, Galli, had had a beautiful time dancing the night away. She continued to support her daughter as the two girls fled from the terrorists into the valley of death where they hid in the bushes.
Meirav stayed on the line when a brave young man who had escaped in a car came back for Romi and Galli and picked up another frightened lad. She shared Romi’s hope as the car made it to a main road, albeit one strewn with young bodies, and, equally, her despair when Hamas riddled the car with bullets, killing Galli, the brave driver and the third passenger while wounding Romi in the arm.
As Hamas thugs dragged her daughter by her hair out of the car, and punched her in the face, the mother said into the phone, again and again, “We love you, you are strong. We love you, you are strong.” 
Today, Romi Gonen will have been held captive in a tunnel in Gaza for 355 days. Yesterday, the Prime Minister of our country called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for the “release of the sausages”. Some will say it was just a slip of the tongue. I say it’s unforgivable.
Keir Starmer was too busy feeding red meat to Labour’s pro-Palestine bloc with his demand that Israel bring about a halt to the war (never mind that it is Hamas that refuses to agree to a ceasefire) to care much about the words that came after.
A bit of hollow grandstanding, play to the Islamist sympathisers who pose an electoral threat to Labour while making a token reference to the Jews. Huge applause in the hall, cheers. Job done!
That’s why Starmer was distracted, why he faltered and made that awful blunder, confusing one of the most painful words in the language (hostages) with one of the silliest.
What an awful speech it was. The delivery was as drab and dutiful as a replacement celebrant at a crematorium. Not a single memorable phrase, no rhetorical flourish, no ideas that took flight. What George Orwell in Politics and the English Language castigated as “pre-fabricated sections of a chicken coop”.
When politicians don’t really know what they’re saying, they bolt together meaningless phrases, like Sir Keir. “That is the Britain we are building.” “This is a government of service.” “A Britain that belongs to you because we came together and built it.” “We must build a new Britain that belongs to you.” Who else does it belong to – Lord Alli? The Islamic Republic of Iran?
“Every decision we take together is necessary,” lectured the PM, “for the British people to face up to decisions in their best interests.” At least I think he said that. Surely, he didn’t say that? “He’s such a prig!” it says in my notes, so maybe he did.
The tantalising promises for the future kept coming. “New pylons overground!” They’re in our best interests, apparently, although fans of England’s green and pleasant land – and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland and Sir Keir’s beloved Lake District – may have other ideas, I suspect.
Tony Blair would never have delivered a speech that censorious, stolid, patronising or downright pompous. “I will always treat you with the respect of candour.” You what? 
Starmer managed to make me nostalgic for Gordon Brown and the intermittent rictus grin, flashing like a demented lighthouse on the blink, after they told him to smile more. (Rachel Reeves has been given the same instruction, but poor Rachel hasn’t grasped that you have to stop smiling when you speak. She tries to do both at the same time, which makes her look like her own ventriloquist’s dummy.)  
Whatever you thought of his politics, Gordon Brown was a man of genuine intellect and passionate conviction. He had read Locke and Hume and would not have stooped to phrases like “mission-led”. His party has fallen to adenoidal mediocrities.
Because we’d listened to all that guff about fixing the foundations, Starmer treated us to a couple of minutes of joy and humour towards the end. Music, creativity was important, he ventured. “Shostakovich!” The camera alighted on the features of Angela Rayner. “Shostakovich? Didn’t she win Wimbledon last year?”
You know, I’m starting to wonder if Keir Starmer will be the first PM in our history to be booed at the Cenotaph. By November, he may well have killed off a few veterans with the removal of their winter fuel allowance. As he peered through his cool spectacles at the autocue (“sausages?”), you thought, “How much did those cost, then, and who paid for them?” This is the new Britain we are building; where you look upon Labour ministers and wonder if they bought their own clothing. 
Several times, Starmer presumed unconvincingly to tell us what the British are like. Well, if there are two things the British don’t like, it’s a bossy boots and a misery guts. Funnily enough, that’s our Prime Minister. “After everything you’ve been through, how hard it is to hear a politician ask for more,” said misery boots and bossy guts. It sure is.