Keir Starmer has reportedly urged his shadow cabinet to stop calling him “boring”.
The Labour leader has faced criticism from anonymous party members who have described him to the media as “semi-serious and a bit dull”.
At a meeting on Tuesday, Sir Keir is said to have told his shadow cabinet in response: “What’s boring is being in opposition.”
He reportedly asked them to focus on criticising the government, adding that it was “boring” to undermine Labour’s aim to get back into power.
Several other party members are said to have echoed Sir Keir’s message and think the Labour leader has not been given enough credit for positive changes in the party.
It comes after multiple senior figures in the party criticised the Labour leader for being slow and lacking passion for policy development and tangible change in the party.
Andrew Fisher, who acted as Labour’s head of policy under Jeremy Corbyn, told The Guardian: “There doesn’t seem to be much passion or detail around any policy area from Keir Starmer.”
One anonymous senior aide said: “There’s no sense of where we can make political hay against our opponents, areas we can be exploiting to draw a clear dividing line between ourselves and the Tories.”
Another MP added: “Fundamentally, I don’t think Keir thinks it’s his job to come up with ideas.”
In opinion polls this week, it was revealed that many voters believe Boris Johnson still makes a better prime minister than Sir Keir would, by 28 per cent to 26 per cent, and “boring” was the most commonly used word to describe the Labour leader by the public.
But, recent voting intention figures by YouGov and The Times show Labour is the most popular choice between parties.
When asked who they would vote for if a general election was to be held tomorrow, 36 per cent of participants say they would vote Labour compared to 32 per cent choosing Conservative.
