When I met Starmer, he’d have won my ‘least likely PM’ vote. Look at him now

Britain has undergone a Tory-ectomy. Starmageddon is under way. Jubilation and relief are in the air. For the first time in 14 years, this population of pessimistic Eeyores is wondering if perhaps optimism is not an eye disease.

But a Labour victory was never a done deal. Despite the polls promising a Labour tsunami and so many ministerial rats deserting the sinking Tory ship, a wary, hardened scepticism has permeated Labour’s ranks. Why? Well, the British are a masochistic lot. They are, after all, the only people on the planet who had a revolution and then asked the monarchy back.

Keir Starmer with Labour supporters. “He’s a bit bland … but he’s finally ousted the crooked Conservatives.”Credit: Getty Images

Another reason Labour kept their hopes limbo-low is the class system. It’s hard for egalitarian Aussies to comprehend how strongly upper-class superiority is sewn into the British psyche. Even their letters travel first and second class, as if the first-class mail gets a little in-flight movie and a paper-parasol cocktail en route.

Surveys reveal that Brits who speak with “received pronunciation”, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and other snobs who send their shirts out to be stuffed, are widely perceived to be more intelligent, punctual, hygienic, capable and reliable than us plebs. Upper-class men are even deemed to be better in bed, a surprising fact as most posh blokes can’t drive past a perversion without pulling over. Put it this way: the cream at their high teas isn’t all they like whipped.

Institutional elitism blights British politics. Eton has produced 20 of Britain’s 55 prime ministers, and the rest are mainly drawn from similarly exclusive educational institutions. This small cartel of privileged people runs British affairs with no idea of the harsh realities of life for ordinary people. Many clearly believe in little besides themselves.

Take David Cameron. (Please do. To kowtow to the Conservatives’ far-right faction, he recklessly kick-started Brexit, making him one of the most despised politicians in Britain.) I met him numerous times during his No.10 tenure, and the man is nothing more than charisma wrapping a vacuum.

Mind you, Boris Johnson makes Cameron look like a Boy Scout. When I first met Johnson, he was mayor of London. With rumours flying around Fleet Street about his sexual kleptomania and his love child, I commented facetiously that I didn’t see him as a mayor but more as a stallion. But Boris took this as an invitation to go into flirt overdrive, confirming my suspicion that he suffers from a chronic irony deficiency.

One minute with Liz Truss also verified my hunch that she needs to grow an extra brain cell, as the one she has must get so lonely up there. In her audience with the King, just after she’d crashed the economy, even the royal diplomat was overheard to despair, “Oh dear, oh dear.”

Living in England, I’ve looked up many noses – even people shorter than me. And Rishi Sunak is no exception. At the recent opening of the Portrait Gallery, as soon as he heard my Aussie accent, the bonsai PM looked down on me despite my vertiginous heels. What Rishi lacks in height, he makes up for with a towering bank balance. The Sunday Times Rich List values his family fortune at £651 million. A man of the people, obviously.

But now, after all the sordid scandals – Partygate, corrupt PPE contracts for cronies, Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie Antoinette’s extravagant gold wallpaper, tractor porn, sexual harassment suits, insider betting scandals, rivers and seas awash with sewage, the National Health Service in intensive care, libraries closed and schools collapsing with concrete cancer, etc – a Labour PM is moving into Downing Street.

I first met Keir Starmer in the early ’90s when he pushed aside the baby bottles and half-eaten fish fingers on my kitchen table to spread out his bundle of legal papers.

My then-husband, Geoff Robertson, had hired Keir as his junior. Keir then joined Geoff in establishing Doughty Street Chambers, now Europe’s largest human rights practice, and acted in many of its leading cases. With his crumpled cardigan, rumpled shirt, intensely earnest conversation and hangdog expression, he would easily have won my vote as Least Likely To Be Prime Minister.

Well, from my kitchen table to forming a kitchen cabinet, it’s a big moment for Doughty Street Chambers. They’ve invited me to their triumphant election celebration. Keir is no Clement Attlee. He’s cautious, a bit bland and with no big vision, but he’s finally ousted the crooked Conservatives. Putting broken Britain back together again will require a labour of love. Literally.

But right now, all this chaos-weary country wants is to give a big sigh of relief and throw a huge farewell party to those toxic Tories.

Kathy Lette’s latest novel is The Revenge Club.

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