Social media was abuzz with reaction last night after Sir Keir Starmer appeared on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories.
In a wide-ranging interview the Labour leader spoke about his childhood, the death of his mother and his strained relationship with his father.
And he pledged: “I will be different with my kids.”
But politically, he said now was a “pivotal moment” for both him personally and his party.
Journalist Mr Morgan told Sir Keir, in an episode of Life Stories to be aired on Tuesday, that his friends described him as “loud” and “garrulous” and that he was “a guy who plays football every Sunday and kicks seven bells out of people, beating his chest like he’s Patrick Vieira”.
But Sir Keir said: “There’s a big difference between the forensic lawyer and Keir on the football pitch. If I was Keir on the football pitch, I think I’d be chucked out by the Speaker. So we’ve got to be careful about how far we go.”
He said: “Let me get out there, let me take the mask off, because we’ve been living in restrictions.
“As we come out of this, this allows the space to open up, the pandemic allows the political space to open up, the restrictions allow me to open up.”
Asked what he would say to Boris Johnson right now, he said: “Move over, we’re coming.”
But asked what he would say to the Prime Minister on the football pitch, he said: “I’d probably knock him over.”
On Labour’s prospects, Sir Keir said: “I’m not going to pretend the last few weeks have been easy, but there’s a huge emotion that runs through the Labour Party, and we lost in Hartlepool, we lost badly.
“But when you want to win, it hurts to lose. There’s emotion there.”
He said his three top priorities were a “first-class education for every child. Second thing, to make sure our economy deals with insecurity and inequality. A third thing is to put real dignity into older age”.
He added: “The biggest change we need to make is a Labour Party that stops looking in on itself and looks out to the electorate, to the voters.”
Reactions came in thick and fast on social media last night.
Here’s what people had to say:
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