QUENTIN LETTS: Starmer, that boring outdated vegan sausage, waddled as much as the lectern – and bored the Y-fronts off us all for 20 minutes

Another Monday morning, another Starmer re-set speech. Every week it happens and every week the dull, old vegan sausage is blown off course by some news sensation and has to go into damage-limitation mode amid much constipated blinking and pursing of lips.

This time it was Rachel Reeves. Was she a goner? Would she still be Chancellor at the end of the parliament (by which time she may down to the last few 50ps in petty cash)? 

Sir Keir could have said ‘daft question – no prime minister discusses cabinet colleagues like that’. Instead he did the relegation-zone football-club chairman thing and expressed ‘full confidence’ in the manager. She’s doomed!

‘Rachel Reeves is doing a fun-tustic job,’ snapped Sir Keir, whose vowels become muddy when he is on the defensive. ‘She has my full confidence and she has the full confidence of the entire party.’

Labour MPs have been saying all sorts of rude things about her. By spouting such a demonstrably untrue claim, Sir Keir made his own ‘full confidence’ sound dicey.

This sparked online headlines such as ‘PM refuses to say Reeves won’t be given the heave-ho’. 

Downing Street convulsed at this unfair hoopla by announcing, mid-afternoon, that Ms Reeves would indeed still be Chancellor for the entire parliament.

Wise move? No. It made things worse. Markets may now feel there is no escape from the mad axe-woman of No 11. 

In a speech today, Keir Starmer (pictured at University College London) claimed Artificial Intelligence would ‘turbocharge’ Labour’s growth plans as well as transform the lives of ordinary people

And a shrewder PM might reflect that the power to sack colleagues is a vital part of his armoury.

Every time a minister is [start itals] dans le potage[end itals] reporters will now ask ‘will they still be in the job at the election?’ Sir Keir has created gridlock for himself. And what happens if he does[itals] have to sack Ms Reeves?

Back to yesterday’s important speech. Sir Keir, whose government has had more relaunches than Cape Canaveral, was this time at University College London to discuss artificial intelligence (AI) and – zzzzz – his ‘action plan’. 

Behind him stood a robot that had been rendered completely inert. Sir Keir’s rhetoric does have this effect.

A brief introduction came from a go-getter called Matt Clifford. He was just the sort of handsome, can-do spark you want to talk about AI. Alas, he yielded the floor to Peter Kyle, that slightly glib fellow who is science secretary.

Mr Kyle hollered that it was ‘exciting to be working for a bold and challenging prime minister’, which at least made a few people laugh. 

Mr Kyle’s sycophancy was the cue for Sir Keir to waddle to the lectern and proceed to bore the Y-fronts off everyone for the next 20 minutes.

The only thing ‘bold and challenging’ about the event was Mr Kyle’s suit, a wasp-waisted job almost as synthetic and lightweight as its owner.

Sir Keir said he had ‘confidence’ in Rachel Reeves (pictured in China last week) despite government borrowing costs spiking

Sir Keir’s speech had a peculiar opening all about some poor woman who suffered a stroke which was diagnosed by AI. Sir Keir added that he had just met the lady. By God, had she not suffered enough?

When describing this unfortunate patient’s part-paralysed face, Sir Keir held a hand up to his own face to help us imagine her sagging cheeks. 

As I say, it was an odd opening to a speech.

Other oratorical weirdnesses: a tendency to lean forward on the lectern and go all intimate and whispery but then to stand upright when it seemed the lectern might topple over; an injection of blokeishness when he mentioned darts; a matey mention of his late father’s Ford Cortina; and a seer-of-the-ages tone when he said ‘mark my words’ and talked about AI’s possible powers.

All this reeked of inauthenticity. So did his insistence that the economy was in capable hands. 

The only plus point of the day was that he was obliged to concede that the sole reason we have such a great opportunity with AI is, yes, Brexit. 

Not that he would actually use the B-word. Like the words ‘Tulip’ and ‘Siddiq’ it is now banned in the Starmer household.