igel Farage has left the building. His contract with the radio station LBC was not renewed following his offensive comments on Twitter, likening Black Lives Matter protesters who pulled down the Edward Colston statue in Bristol to the Taliban. Sadly, it won’t be the last of him: Farage will still yak away on TalkRadio. He’ll doubtless continue to rant about attacks on “our nation, our symbols, our heritage”. Still, the LBC departure surely spells the beginning of the end of the great “echo chamber” swindle. By which I mean, the tyranny of anyone objecting to “certain views” being automatically slapped down and accused of living in an echo chamber, where, the rationale ran, the only facts and views that liberal elitists deigned to acknowledge were from other lovely liberal elitists. And lo, it came to pass, whenever the going got tough for the likes of Farage, whenever their logic shredded like wet lavatory paper or their dodgy rhetoric started stinking up the place, they only had to spout about metropolitan echo chambers and critics would be silenced. Obviously, this all started with Brexit and, in many ways, it was a good thing: an overdue wake-up call for people to listen and learn. Except that didn’t happen or, more precisely, it did happen, but only in one direction. While many of the “metropolitan elite” did at least try to listen and learn, the likes of Farage never returned the favour. Not once did I hear Farage accepting a point from the other side. Not once did I observe him treating others at EU gatherings with an iota of respect. This game was rigged so that everyone had to listen to the likes of Farage, but they didn’t have to do any listening themselves. Which sounds suspiciously like… an echo chamber. All too frequently, these past five years, it has seemed as though those raving the most about echo chambers are more interested in stifling debate, not promoting it, and stopping progress, not working towards it. Farage was the smirking, pint-wielding exemplar of all that: the wealthy Dulwich College-educated chancer, preposterously restyled as the Voice of the Common Man. Perhaps the UK has finally tired of this poisonous, one-sided charade, where only one type of echo chamber is acknowledged. Maybe people – on all sides – have become sick to death of “characters” such as Farage, populist grifters who represent only themselves and seem prepared to surf disturbing political waves to get where they want to be. Yes, Farage will still be around – for now – but the tide appears to be turning. Any broadcaster needs to seriously consider what hiring someone like him says about them. Maybe that explains why Farage objected so strongly to old relics being pulled from their plinths. Increasingly, it looks likely that Farage must fall. Labour needs a grown-up leader, so don’t knock Starmer A new political narrative is struggling to emerge: Keir the Dull. There’s been an interestingly diverse range of attempts to dismiss the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, as boring, mainstream, “too lawyerly” and the rest. There are criticisms from Labour ultra-lefties about him not being exciting or revolutionary enough, such as when he handled the toppling of the statues by saying that certain statues should be removed, but in an official, orderly way. Then there are the increasingly desperate claims from Tories that Starmer is “failing” opposite Boris Johnson in PMQs. Do they mean when Starmer asks questions and the PM responds with deranged, Latin-tinged bluster, like a nightmare he might have where he’s turned up naked, pissed and holding a traffic cone at an Oxford Union debate? That kind of “failing”? Meanwhile, the public is lapping up Starmer. A recent Ipsos Mori poll showed that not only is Starmer closing in on Johnson, he also has the highest satisfaction rating since triple election winner, Tony Blair, before the 1997 landslide. None of which was achieved by the previous Labour leader. That’s Jeremy Corbyn (net popularity rating at last election: -60), last spotted casting doubt on the impartiality of the Equality and Human Rights Commission… which happens to be investigating antisemitism allegations under his leadership. It’s early days but perhaps people like Starmer because he’s dogged, sharp, mainstream and mature. The question is whether he can keep his nerve and stay that way. Recall the nightmare vision of one-time Conservative leader William Hague trying to look trendy and with-it at the Notting Hill carnival. The disaster would be for Starmer to suddenly decide he’s “exciting” and that his job is shouting into megaphones at demonstrations. Starmer’s job is to lead the Labour party and become prime minister; to be a political grown-up. Think Oddjob is frightening, Mr Bond? Try a baby Is James Bond man enough to be a decent dad? News has leaked that Bond could have a five-year-old daughter in the next film, No Time to Die. Intriguingly, reactions have focused almost exclusively on possible curtailments to Bond’s freedom, with men seeming especially grief-stricken that their fantasy figure’s relentless rutting has resulted in an actual pregnancy. Admittedly, it’s amusing to think of the boorish tuxedo-clad twerp being forced off his yacht to sort out some potato-printing or put on a Sylvanian Families baby rabbit’s tiny dress. (Good luck with that, Mr Bond.) Then again, how interesting that it’s automatically presumed that the ultra-macho spy would somehow be emasculated, brought low, by fatherhood, that his life would instantly be reduced to monochrome suburban ghastliness. The opposite is more likely to be true. While not everyone wants children, most men, like most women, would consider parenthood to be transformative and inspiring, not to mention terrifying. It’s one of the scariest, most difficult things a person could do. And it’s forever. Never mind gunfights or talking to some weird bloke stroking a white cat. By comparison, that’s easy and transitory. If any man really wants to see what he’s made of, he should try becoming a father. Any fool can dangle off a helicopter. • Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist