Dear Keir,
I suppose I should say, right from the get-go, that there’s no salacious gossip here. Nothing for the tabloids. If there are skeletons in closets, I know nothing of them. Although we were at Leeds University at the same time, Keir, our paths never crossed – not that I know of, anyway. Leeds was a big place. You were busy studying law, I was contemplating philosophy. And while I know people who know people who knew you, we moved in different worlds. I don’t remember you from then, and you’ve no reason to remember me.
But now and then, in idle moments, I look back at those times and wonder if there were evenings when we sat, by chance, at neighbouring tables in the student union bar. Perhaps you told the people round you how your dad was a toolmaker. Perhaps you didn’t. And I wonder, given how life turned out – with you being prime minister and all – what you were like then. What you believed in. What you thought. In my wildest dreams I hoped I might make it to forty, however unlikely that seemed. Did you already have a career mapped out? High office in your sights?
And if you did, what did you hope you’d use that office for? Did you dream of one day heading our government? Dream of supplying intelligence and arms to a murderous regime? Dream of standing up at the despatch box and refusing to use the word ‘genocide’ about what human rights groups across the world are saying is genocide? Is that what you dreamt, Keir? Are you outraged that I’m asking? It’s incredible I have to, but at this stage – given how life turned out – I’m ruling nothing out and ruling nothing in.
And if you didn’t, Keir, then when did that change? When did you decide that an army which shoots at six-year-old Hind Rajab over 350 times is an army whose actions you’ll continue to defend? When did you look at the images coming out of Gaza – young men burned alive in tents, grandmothers shot by snipers, the forced starvation of two million people – and think that is something you should be supporting, something you should take no action whatsoever to oppose? When did ‘never again’ become just an empty politician’s phrase, something you don’t mean?
What happened to you, Keir? What happened to you?
I still know people who know people who know you. But we move in different worlds.
Regards,
Steve
