Benjamin Disraeli once observed that the difference between a misfortune and a calamity was that if Mr Gladstone fell in the Thames it would be a misfortune, but if someone pulled him out it would be a calamity. As the government moves indisputably from being victims of misfortune to being agents of calamity, so we might recycle the quip about Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister today entered his ‘not waving but drowning’ era. And he is, to use the sort of girlboss gibbering signalling which his MPs routinely resort to, slaying it. Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was, deliciously, one of his worst yet.

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was, deliciously, one of Starmer’s worst yet

Why was it, Mrs Badenoch asked, that Labour MPs were calling Sir Keir ‘a caretaker prime minister’. It’s an odd phrase to use for Sir Keir given ‘taking care’ is hardly how I’d describe his attitude to the economy, the constitution, the nation more generally, though given that the most famous caretaker in recent British history was Ian Huntley, perhaps it isn’t quite the compliment that its etymology suggests. Yet it was of course never meant as a compliment but rather a reference to the bell tolling on his short and not so sweet premiership.

‘My MPs are very proud!’ barked Sir Keir in that unique Dalek intonation. Not for the first time, anger met adenoids and the effect was grating. Like........

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