This election should not descend into personal abuse, which only serves to lower leaders’ reputations

Of the many bizarre aspects of the British general election of 2024, still in its first week of campaigning, one of the strangest is the sudden emergence of personal briefings by the Conservatives against Sir Keir Starmer. Some – in an all-too-clumsy echo of the Trump style of politics – have tried to nickname him “Sleepy Keir”, or “Sir Sleepy”, even though he is a good 20 years younger than Joe Biden.

Sir Keir, a fairly vigorous 61-year-old who can play indifferent football for his amateur team for a full 90 minutes plus stoppage time, has had to do his talking off the pitch as well as on it. Tackled by reporters during his key speech events about claims emanating from the Tory chair, Richard Holden, and his circle that he is “weary”, Sir Keir could only point to the work he and his team do, and remark that his opponents sounded desperate. After the Conservatives’ desperately poor start to the campaign, that sounds about right.

The Tories will need to do better than adapting lazy, unconvincing Trumpian insults if they want to overhaul Labour’s 20-point lead. Drawing attention to the personal qualities of the two contenders for the premiership is probably not the way to inject more life into their efforts to persuade the public to give them a fifth term in office.