> (This actually surprises me, and I wonder whether it’s only referring to the inability to do LTO, or whether even LTO-less static linking is faster.)

I think the latter is also the case (though to a much lesser extent) on x64. One of the unfortunate features of x64 is it lacks direct 64-bit jumps, so every jump to an external library ends up being an indirect call. (In fact, with a potential memory load on top of that.) This was kind of surprising for me when I learned it too; it doesn't apply to x86.