Starmer’s cringe-making video address to his son for International Men’s Day only served to underline how odd and lifeless a politician he really is, says Eliot Wilson

Last Wednesday was International Men’s Day. To mark the occasion – and, because he is a politician, and self-promotion is an intrinsic part of the role – Sir Keir Starmer released a video of himself reading a letter to his son. (Starmer Minor was not pictured and we can assume was not actually present.) It was a distinctly odd and unsettling experience.

I confess that I am instinctively sceptical of the concept of “International Men’s Day”. I am very aware that, now more than ever, there are many particular challenges faced by men of all ages. We are in the midst of a societal, perhaps global conversation about what it means to be a man in the contemporary world, the phrase “toxic masculinity” soon marches on stage. That then provokes the noxious bravado of inadequate misogynists like the Tate brothers, Nick Fuentes and Myron Gaines, obscuring real issues like mental illness, a staggeringly high incidence of suicide and declining educational attainment and professional success.

For all that, “International Men’s Day” sounds like a demand of the saloon bar bore, who thinks feminism has “gone too far” and protests that “you can’t say anything these days”. That........

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