Keir Starmer may be trying to distance himself from Donald Trump, but he now seems to have adopted one of the US president’s favourite means of communications – AI-generated social media. Although in Starmer’s case, his efforts are at least cringe-inducing rather than riot-provoking.
Starmer has been persuaded to use TikTok in a bid to appeal to what Smash Hits used to call “ver kids”, and this week posted a nine-second video of his live appearance on comic Matt Forde’s podcast at a London theatre showing what a card he is by donning a pair of Aviator sunglasses à la Emmanuel Macron (the French president wore a pair for his Davos speech last week to mask a broken blood vessel in one eye).
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Had he not given the ick enough (message to younger colleagues: is this right?), “Starmer”, or at least one his team, tagged in Macron’s account with the message “Talk to me, Goose” in a reference to the Top Gun films. “Macron”, or at least one of his team, responded “For sure”, prompting the Starmer account to post an AI image of the pair of them as the main characters in the movies, each clad in Aviators and with their respective names and national flags on their fatigues. That’s the youth vote sewn up then!
In fairness to Starmer, the responses to his posts were not universally awful, with a number of users appearing to actually warm to him – and at the time of writing the initial video was approaching a million views.
Unfortunately for the PM, that was followed by another video showing Starmer in a more standard pose, giving a stilted short speech to camera about his plans to cap ground rents while walking awkwardly and delivering it with all the passion of a man leaving instructions for the au pair. Still – baby steps!
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