Time can make you swallow words once spoken with confidence.

I stuck up for the BBC as pro-Corbyn types complained the corporation had it in for their man Jeremy. All Labour leaders have a tough time in the media, I used to point out, annoyingly.

Still, that was true then and remains so today. Now Sir Keir Starmer is the one constantly berated by the newspapers and the TV news.

Perhaps unfashionably, I believe Starmer deserves a fairer hearing than he gets. No one at the BBC appears to share that belief. Almost all news about Starmer is framed negatively. While weaselly political editor Chris Mason insists on buttering up Nigel Farage. Sizzling him in more butter than to be found in a Lurpak TV advert.

Whatever you think of Starmer, and not liking or trusting him is perfectly fine if that’s your honest belief, surely only a deluded fool thinks Farage would make a better prime minister.

Farage has never done anything useful in politics; he hasn’t worked hard – or at all – as an MP to represent his constituents or to argue for change through debate. All he ever does is shout in the hope voters will mistake noise for nous. More fool them if they do.

Like his pal Trump, Farage appears to see politics as a self-enrichment scheme (‘Farage earns more than £1m a year for non-MP work’ – a rare BBC headline that came without the blandishment).

The Guardian has been my newspaper of choice for decades, especially on Saturday. How trying then to find it seems to have joined the Bash Starmer Street Kids of the Mail and the Telegraph, who have campaigned against him from day one.

Last Saturday’s edition was filled with Starmer’s difficulties over the fallout from his admittedly foolish appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

A column by the usually interesting Jonathan Freeland trundled out the standard anti-Starmer message, while an accompanying leader column could have been put in the Daily Mail with hardly a changed word. Even John Crace, saint of snark and my favourite political writer, has been at it.

Yet on Threads, my feed is full of people who support Starmer, especially over his refusal to join Trump’s misguided and illegal war against Iran. Many are also disgruntled with the Guardian.

Picture: From Jack Dart on Facebook

Yes, choosing Mandelson was a rotten idea. Yet all sorts congratulated Starmer at the time, not least Farage, the hypocrite’s hypocrite. He backed the appointment, calling Mandelson a “very intelligent man” and an “enormously talented bloke”, and offered to work with him on a Trump trade deal.

As soon as it all backfired, Farage whistled another tune. Probably one from the Great American Far-Right Songbook.

And yet in the photograph above, Farage is seen being matey with Mandelson – suggesting that politics is a closed world, filled with play-acting charlatans who chummy up to their enemies.

Will Mandelson be the end of SKS? I hope not as his government is achieving much good. Unemployment is down, the economy is growing, NHS waiting lists are down and 450,000 children have been lifted out of poverty (Farage would shove them back there). Oh, and Starmer has just promised to break the link between energy bills and the price of gas, surely a good move.

The Mandelson saga is one of those Westminster plotlines, obsessed over by key players in the soap, yet of little interest to most ordinary voters. But maybe I will have to swallow those words, too.

I AM in Knutsford for the day, taking my 94-year-old mother out for lunch. It is warm enough to sit outside. ‘Are you growing a beard?’ she asks, peering over the table through darkened lens.

‘It was your idea,’ I say.

She thought my sons looked good with beards and suggested I give it a try. So I did.

I remind her of this, and she says the beard looks good. Perhaps only a mother could say that. It is not exactly hirsute and might be taken by a passing wind or a sharp tongue.

At my boys grammar school in times of ancient history, one bearded teacher advised shaving the neck each week, something I now do. A younger teacher grew a beard to compensate for his departing hair. I recall quipping to a friend that he was making up below for what had gone up top. What a wit I was.

Some years later, my hair went the same way. And many more years on, I am attempting that upside down trick with a modest beard. A little like this blog, it is there but not everyone notices.

ON the return journey, traffic is awful. The M60 round Stockport is a semi-permanent traffic jam, as usual. Everything eases off on the M62 but soon signs warn the motorway is closed at junction 29 (the one for Leeds and York).

Google maps suggests joining a different traffic jam. Travelling alone, I am free to swear, which I do. It doesn’t improve my mood. Later I find out that a number of cars had crashed on the M62, some bursting into flames. The motorway remains shut for 12 hours and I feel guilty about the swearing.