Three cheers for weird Keir and the return of the centrist dad

With Labour taking aim at yet another PM, Will Gore questions easy characterisations

Labour’s attempts to draw a distinction between Starmer and Sunak may need a bit more thought (PA)

It’s five years since the “centrist dad” meme took off, the term primarily used by younger people on the political left to critique middle-aged men who, as one former Jeremy Corbyn spokesperson told the BBC at the time, “cannot come to terms with the world and politics changing”.

Back in the autumn of 2017, Corbynism was riding high. The Labour leader had wowed Glastonbury and then in October his party had increased their number of parliamentary seats at the general election. Centrist dads, who apparently hankered after the Blair years, had been shown up, along with their condescending ways.

As sure as night follows days, there were some who immediately turned the critique on its head, and wore the term as a badge of honour. I wasn’t one of them, but only because the meme had passed – as memes do – by the time I’d cottoned onto it. This column, which came to life in 2020, was given the centrist dad moniker in large part because it felt like quite a centrist dad thing to do: to reclaim an expression that most people had either forgotten about or never knew in the first place.