Just to be clear, I didn't call Starmer bigoted, I said he was in hock to bigoted right wing ideology. That's where he's chosen to focus his fight against the Tories, for example by playing to the red wall Brexit gallery and hoping nobody notices that he was an absolutely vehement Remainiac who did everything he could to push Labour in that direction.
And Starmer is not nu-Labour. He makes Blair look like Che Guevara.
Your second paragraph is probably true, at least in the context of Starmer's strategy, which is to convince centrists and soft Tories that he'll govern according to the same basic ideology and the Tories, but with less incompetence and corruption, and reassure them that they don't have to fear any of the traditional left wing bogeymen like higher income taxes. In fact I'd say these sorts of things like OJ flouncing would be seen by him as a positive benefit, because thet help to distance him from the dangerous left and thus increase his appeal to the cautious right and centre. That's why he threw Corbyn out from the supposed Labour "broad church".