WHEN people ask what Keir Starmer, the Holborn and St Pancras MP, is like – you have to step carefully.

He must be aware that his name can conjure up sharp contrasts.

In a world where only the angriest opinions clock the social media algorithms, people claim to hate him.

The definition of parody is stretched to new limits by what mean things AI can do to a politician’s appearance in the name of caricature.

Conversely, you will hear over and again from politicos and journalists about what a good man he is. ‘He’s a good man, but…’ has been the way to start a sentence in their Westminster cocoon for some time.

I did see the good man Starmer when we visited the refugee camp near Calais known as “The Jungle” on a news assignment in 2016.

People were living in tents on a bog of excrement, struggling to stay warm or find enough to eat.

He showed compassion talking to both those who were living in this hellhole and the volunteers trying to improve their lives. We both agreed we’d hug our own children a little closer when we got home that night, such was the horror we had seen.

Many times I’ve reflected on that day, as Mr Starmer toughened up his narratives on boat crossings and detention centres. It all led to a clumsy mess when he accidentally said he wanted to get planes jetting people back to Bangladesh just before the 2024 election.

It felt like politics, the machine and a cacophony of advisers had deadened the edges of his empathy.

When the pressure of a mic is removed, he is still a “good man”, and those close to him say he remembers their personal worries even if he hasn’t seen them for a while. If he had shown more of what he is like when he is relaxed, talking about football with his friends in the Pineapple, the public might have been more drawn to him.

But it is a bit of a myth that his poll ratings were low simply because he couldn’t deliver a few more jokes.

Instead, the man with so much concern in Calais was now willing to keep the two-child benefit cap for too long, slash disability support, and more. That was quite a journey.