Three cheers for weird Keir and the return of the centrist dad

It’s five years since the “centrist dad” meme took off, the term primarily used by younger people on the political left to critique middle-aged men who, as one former Jeremy Corbyn spokesperson told the BBC at the time, “cannot come to terms with the world and politics changing”.

Back in the autumn of 2017, Corbynism was riding high. The Labour leader had wowed Glastonbury and then in October his party had increased their number of parliamentary seats at the general election. Centrist dads, who apparently hankered after the Blair years, had been shown up, along with their condescending ways.

As sure as night follows days, there were some who immediately turned the critique on its head, and wore the term as a badge of honour. I wasn’t one of them, but only because the meme had passed – as memes do – by the time I’d cottoned onto it. This column, which came to life in 2020, was given the centrist dad moniker in large part because it felt like quite a centrist dad thing to do: to reclaim an expression that most people had either forgotten about or never knew in the first place.

Now, however, the phrase is back – and has been even further rehabilitated – after Labour insiders briefed journalists on how they would seek to draw lines of demarcation between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak by presenting the former as a reliable “centrist dad” and the latter as a “weird guy”. So, what goes around comes around – Starmer, perhaps emboldened by the use of the term in this column if nowhere else (sure, sure), must feel he’s onto a winner.

However, I fear there may be trouble ahead for Labour with these characterisations. For one thing, with their sharp suits, south of England accents and family-man pretensions, the presentational similarities between the party leaders are more obvious than the differences. What’s more, Sunak’s children are much more visible than Starmer’s, and while the Labour leader’s outlook is evidently more centrist than his predecessor’s, so is Sunak’s (all in all) compared with his – and Sunak has the advantage that his leadership is much younger so the comparison with Liz Truss feels fresher than Starmer’s with Corbyn.

In summary, I suspect you’d be about as likely to find the words “centrist” and “dad” on a Rishi Sunak word cloud as a Keir Starmer one.

But the other problem is with the “weird” characterisation. On the one hand, I’m not convinced it’s something that will stick when it comes to Rishi. Yes, he’s a tad robotic and doesn’t know how to use a credit card reader, but he’s not exactly Mr Bean. On the other hand, Keir has his own slightly odd verbal mannerisms, and is much more likely to be mocked for wearing “cool” trainers than the younger PM.

The truth is “centrist dad” and “weird guy” are not mutually exclusive characteristics, as I can also attest to. After all, there’s little question that I’ve been a lifelong centrist – well, left of centrist really, but shout “Nick Clegg” near me and I’ll turn in excitement, so you get the picture. I’ve also had a fairly daddish attitude for longer than I’ve had children. And more people than I care to mention – including my mother, my wife and most of my friends – have suggested that I’m weird. They mean it affectionately, of course (I think), and it’s only about minor things like having been a teenage collector of Second World War memorabilia or loving both Steps and Thomas Tallis. Still, it just goes to show that Labour’s attempts to draw a distinction between Starmer and Sunak may need a bit more thought.

To be fair to the Labour spinners, they’ve got a couple of years to work on their attack lines before the next general election. Alternatively, they can simply wait for the Tories to implode once again – which on recent form shouldn’t take long, even with a weird centrist dad at the helm.