QUENTIN LETTS: Sadly Keir’s joke concerning the Budget perking up the economic system did not get the lengthy snort it genuinely-earned

His poll ratings are diving like a guillemot and the economy has stalled at the traffic lights but Sir Keir Starmer could not have been more delighted with himself. Taking his seat at the Commons liaison committee, he beamed.

These sessions are notorious for being turgid waffle-fests yet Sir Keir sat before the U-shaped table with discernible excitement. 

Here was a portrait of pride, suntanned self-satisfaction in a sleek suit. Bronzed in December? Now we know what he does on those foreign trips. 

Don’t believe suggestions that his foreign-affairs adviser is Jonathan Powell. It’s really a Ms Ambre Solaire.

On the last day of term a mere 13 of the committee’s 31 MPs had found a hole in their diaries to listen to the old bore. 

Not that Sir Keir was put out by the threadbare matinee crowd. He gazed with immense pleasure through those designer spectacles that cut a wonkish horizontal across his peanut-shaped head.

His first word to the committee? ‘Great!’ Some of us dream of retiring to a cathedral close, others of escaping to Fifeshire golf links or a Goanese beach. 

For Starmer KC, it seems, life’s ambition was to sit opposite the prosaic boobies of the liaison committee and be quizzed on the grinding minutiae of his government’s ‘delivery’.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer attending a Parliamentary Liaison Committee hearing in London

Liam Byrne MP speaking at the Parliamentary Liaison Committee hearing

He launched into boasts about how his economic performance. ‘The Budget was intended to stabilise the economy,’ he claimed. 

This terrific joke should have earned a long laugh but live comedy is a tough gig. Sir Keir did well not to let the lack of response derail him.

No one had the heart to mention that inflation has revived or that the Bank of England, hours earlier, had euthanised its growth forecast. 

Liam Byrne (Lab, Hodge Hill) did try pointing out that businesses were kyboshed by the Budget’s tax hikes, Angela Rayner’s union-friendly laws and the rise in minimum wage.

Sir Keir replied that he was ‘fixing the foundations’. That was the limit of his case. Mr Byrne, who had rolled his shirtsleeves specially for the occasion, sounded underwhelmed. 

As a former banker he possibly hoped for a more factual argument.

Sir Keir used expansive hand gestures. He placed his left elbow on the table and swivelled the wrist and hand like the top of an angle-poise lamp. 

He splayed his fingers when talking about ‘hugely important’ planning reforms. Each one of those fingers was going to achieve great things, we could be sure. 

The Budget was intended to stabilise the economy,’ he claimed Starmer 

 He narrowed his eyes and lifted them to the western horizon as he assembled magisterial thoughts. 

Nero himself was a tiddler compared to a figure of such imperious command as Sir Keir.

The voice was its usual flat thing: he pronounces ‘that’ as ‘thut’ (Robert Peston has the same habit) and his repeated mention of ‘risks and challenges’ became ‘risk and chullenges’. The lazy vowels accentuate an impression of resentfulness.

Tan Singh Dhesi (Lab, Slough), who by some freak of nature chairs the Commons defence committee, was delighted with Sir Keir. 

In an echo of George Galloway’s salute to Saddam, Mr Dhesi told his leader: ‘I thank you for your dedication to duty and your service to our nation.’ MAGNIFICENT.

Later, when Sir Keir was jawing about his foreign trips, Labour’s Dame Meg Hillier snorted ‘hah, we know about those travels’. Mr Dhesi, outraged, cried: ‘Those visits are much needed!’

Caroline Dinenage (Con, Gosport), pop-eyed and blow-dried, plipped her pen top and licked the outside of her teeth as she lobbied for the creative sector.

Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem, Orkney & Shetlands) had Sir Keir in all sorts of trouble on farms’ inheritance changes. 

Emily Thornberry (Lab, Islington S) gurgled ginnily about Syria and seemed quietly surprised that Sir Keir did not know more on the subject.

At the end Dame Meg asked Sir Keir if he had learned anything in his five months of power. No he hadn’t. The answer in his own words: ‘I’m very pleased to be delivering from a position of power.’