It is the most rapid – some would say vapid – reboot and reset by a newly elected Prime Minister with a huge Commons majority in modern times. Five months after entering Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer is seriously struggling. The trotting out of five targets that were in Labour’s oh-so recent general election manifesto cannot credibly be presented as new, innovative, and forward-thinking. Rather, they merely highlight the political awkwardness Starmer has achieved in such a short space of time.

Part and parcel of this is that Starmer’s public personae means he cannot but help present himself as a charmless character, considerably lacking in charisma. Although Tony Blair could get irritable and tetchy when under the fire of journalists’ questioning, he was able to carry himself off with some panache and flair.

No so Starmer. His torrid times since July 5 this year are all too easily on display with his dullness, woodenness and aloofness. He’s like a bank manager of old - the one where you would have to go up to their office to be ably but aloofly assessed for any sort of loan, and especially a mortgage. So, Starmer’s state of political paralysis is equally matched by this ponderous personality.

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But the political paralysis and ponderous personality both speak to a much more profound phenomenon. That is the technocratic tendency that Starmer and now the upper echelons........

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