Is baring the baubles of an ingrained social hierarchy seen as progress by Labour?

What is certainly unclear is whether Starmer aspires to be a rally point for opposition to a disorderly right-wing government or someone so steeped in the limitations of centre-right English politics that he can never become a credible and dogged opposition.

Starmer is in an all-or-nothing negotiation with the unforgiving British media who will ultimately determine whether he is electable or not, and therein lies one of the great compromises of our democracy. A small cabal of newspaper editors does the bidding of their wealthy owners, some hidden away in tax exile, unwilling to show face to the very democracy they seek to control.

Being electable within the dying British state means many things – it can mean a good suit, a neat haircut and a compliant demeanour. More profoundly it means someone who will not seriously advance the cause of wealth redistribution, let alone challenge the orthodoxies of the system. Jeremy Corbyn was a dead man walking through much of his leadership. No matter what he said or how he said it, he was there purely to be undermined – incompetent, “loony left”, a geography teacher, the terrorists’ pal – take your pick from the wide range of resentments that were trotted out to undermine his leadership.

The British media has, in the words of political scientists, triangulated British politics. Only someone in the centre-right is credible and only if he or she navigates the boat without rocking it. I suppose it is a democracy of sorts, since we get to vote, but to imagine it is healthy and fit for the greater good is stretching the definition of democracy to breaking point.

In Starmer’s first few weeks, two of his big slogans have left me searching for a deeper meaning. The phrase Get Brexit Done is parroting the crass wisdom of the Conservatives and is little better than capitulation. As the district of Kent arranges its new borders, the Good Friday Agreement is undermined and devolution is worn away, we must now assume that the campaign to keep our European citizenship is over. In Labour’s eyes, it is no longer worth the effort.

Or is Get Brexit Done a nod to those disenchanted voters in the north of England, who once habitually voted Labour and have now veered to the Tories. Is it code for come home – we get what you are telling us?

And what of Starmer’s risible plea for greater patriotism without even a cursory acknowledgement that the United Kingdom is not a country but a gathering of nations brought together within a union, now surely in its death knells. Was it a plea to the cause of English nationalism or the usual laziness of language that we have come to expect from metropolitan politicians?

Nothing irks the Scots quite as much as believing that their nation, their identity and their hopes can be casually bundled together as if they are a sub-region of England. If I had a bawbee for every time in my life the words Britain, the United Kingdom and England have been elided together I could personally fund a central bank.

Can a politician with the experience of Keir Starmer really believe that patriotism can be mobilised in such a slippery and imprecise way? Has he even considered that invoking patriotism in Scotland has a pathway to independence, not to some rehashed version of the British state where our votes are discounted and our ambitions thwarted?

A sign of what’s to come can be found in one of Starmers’s first actions. Last week he sacked three junior shadow ministers for opposing a controversial armed forces bill, when the party whip had advocated abstaining. The area of legislation which protects British Army personnel from prosecution potentially breaches international humanitarian law and is virtually impossible to square with offences such as war crimes and torture. The Government says the bill is designed to end vexatious litigation against the armed forces. Yet again, in their penchant for abstaining, Labour seems to be saying that they want to be a party of patriotism rather than human rights.

OK, time to get real about Starmer. I cannot abide the fact that the man is a “Sir” and that the Labour Party seem to think this is inconsequential. Over the past few weeks I have spoken to several Labour Party commentators that are “comfortable” with this, and that only people caught in the past care anymore.

Is this how far Labour have travelled that endorsing the honours system, being comfortable with the House of Lords and baring the baubles of an ingrained social hierarchy are seen as progress. All I can say is that it is in marked contrast to the widespread disbelief that Ruth Davidson was being honoured as a Baroness.

The honour system is either an award for service to your community or it is a symbol of monarchy, hierarchy and deference. I hold the latter opinion and I am not alone. One of the most formidable characters in the Labour Party’s modern history was the third Viscount Stansgate, who as Tony Benn disclaimed his title and re-entered parliament as an elected MP and what is still known as a “commoner”.

As I argued politely with an old friend, the tortured soul tried to defend the “Sir” in Sir Keir Starmer because his first name was Keir, a name he inherited from Keir Hardie, an illustrious founder of the Labour Party, their first parliamentary leader and one time Secretary of the Ayrshire Miners’ Union.

In this complexity of signifiers, Starmer’s first name somehow cancels out his title. It is a fallacious argument which invites the sceptical to ask about the “burden” of Hardie’s ideas – radical land reform, workers’ rights and home rule for Scotland. Starmer’s name is a sorcerer’s dream – somehow important and yet not, socialist and yet entitled, distinctive and yet ordinary.

The one area where Starmer has shifted Labour Party ground is recognising that Scottish democracy cannot be continually frustrated. He has conceded that the go-ahead for another independence referendum can be won at the next parliamentary elections in Scotland. It has left some of the more stubborn Unionists among his flock bealing, seething and raging.

It is scant progress, worth having on record but hardly transformative if Labour remain outsiders in England.

Finally, I’d like to clear up another matter which concerns me more than most. I live in Glasgow North East, the seat once occupied by Willie Bain and therefore the birthplace of the so-called Bain Principle which states that “Scottish Labour MPs have a convention of not supporting motions put down by the Scottish National Party” and so will always oppose them.

Does this kind of blinkered tribalism still have a place within Starmer’s party? Or is it now just a crude relic from the dying taxonomy of wee willies, best left in the dustbin of history? I would like to know. In a future Scotland we need an opposition that is skilled in challenging a ruling party, not a lumbering ruck of unthinking prejudices.

Surely, if Sir Keir Starmer has any realistic hope of challenging the current government at Westminster, then a more sophisticated understanding of the SNP’s continuing electoral success is needed.

If he wants to lead a successful opposition north of the Border, then knee-jerk hatred is hardly a platform to build on.