In the post-war chronicles of those who’ve occupied 10 Downing Street, all human failings – and a few vices – have been evident in their denouements. Margaret Thatcher’s years of hectoring and finger-wagging led inevitably to a disorderly queue of dribbling Tory grandees shuffling at her door. And when Boris Johnson’s impression of Worzel Gummidge on speed became even too much a party of blue-rinsed sociopaths you knew his time was up.

David Cameron meanwhile, seemed merely to have become bored in the manner of a spoiled, rich teenager who tires of daddy’s sports car and now wants a yacht. Tony Blair realised he could make money from the Middle East instead of invading it. To that gilded roll-call of good, bad and ugly, we can now add plain stupid in the feckless form of Sir Keir Starmer. No other dead man’s walk started as early as this chap’s. When the inevitable docu-drama is made about Sir Keir’s long walk to oblivion – and in a departure from British television convention – the Prime Minister will be played by an AI creation and not by Michael Sheen to make him look and sound more real.

His supporters tell us he has values and principles. But he is the UK’s first independent Prime Minister, a member of no party and yet every party, motivated solely by his own residency of 10 Downing Street. Even before Sir Olly Robbins gave evidence on Tuesday to the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, we knew Sir Keir would be taking on more water. We’d only previously glimpsed Sir Olly in found footage of him walking along a London street, his head inclined slightly to the left in that odd patrician manner when they’re trying to maintain dignity in the company of vagabonds. To call him a........

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