It was when Keir Starmer claimed never to have had a dream that I knew we were dealing with potentially one of the funniest prime ministers the nation had ever seen. Sure, some people would have been amused by the magnetism for calamity exhibited by Theresa May, the almost comedically unbelievable mendacity of Boris Johnson or the downright absurdism of Liz Truss, but a really funny prime minister is the one who demands to be taken seriously, and particularly one who is convinced that he has forced the British people to do so.
The shallow majority, the largely unimpressive parliamentary party, the ‘bastards’ who betrayed him, the total lack of ideas and the obvious personal failings will now all be touted from various quarters as reasons that lead this farce to unravel quite as quickly as it did. For what it’s worth, I think it was clear from the first couple of months. There were multiple signs early on: Lord Alli, Southport, the clucking anger at PMQs when it became clear the job wasn’t the walk in the park which he’d spent the last five years implying it was.
The prime minister we were told the nation needed turned out to be the one it deserved
But whatever caused it, now it’s all over. Like the mediocrities before him, Starmer leaves amid what is now a set piece of absurd theatre: the Downing Street lectern man, the vultures of the press licking their lips, the few members of the cabinet still talking to the outgoing prime minister standing behind and wondering which title they’ll take for their peerage, the interruptions by the appalling Steve Bray, a man as funny as pancreatic cancer, who thinks that blasting music out of his giant speakers is the height of political commentary.
