SARAH VINE: Starmer has reached peak megalomania in simply three months

The new Me & Em ­catalogue (much favoured by female members of Labour’s Cabinet) plopped on to my doormat yesterday. Lovely stuff, as always. I was particularly taken by a stylish lace silk blouse in this season’s must-have colourway, a deep plum.

But at £295 I fear I may have to give it a miss. Zara will no doubt have an equivalent for a fraction of that price – and sadly I have no obliging Lord Alli waiting in the wings with an open chequebook.

Of all the scandals that might have dogged the Prime Minister during his first few weeks of office, who would have thought it would be this? That a man whose entire political persona seems to have been constructed around a monkish, holier-than-thou hair-shirtery would end up making a fool of himself over… well, shirts?

All politicians must accept that at some point their carefully built-up political capital will be eroded. But to squander so much so early on in a premiership is almost unprecedented. At least Liz Truss spent hers on a wild gamble designed to get the country out of a financial hole: she may not have succeeded, but she had the right intentions.

Starmer, by contrast, has wasted all his political capital on clothes. And pop concerts. And tickets to the ­football. And sticking two fingers up to pensioners. Honestly, if I didn’t know for a fact that he was a ­silver-haired 62-year-old, I’d assume he was my teenage son.

As for his good Lady-wife – what a disappointment. I must confess that, like quite a few of my friends, even staunch Tory ones, I had a bit of a girl crush on Lady Vic. She always seemed too cool for school, the kind of woman who would take her husband’s ­elevation to Prime Minister in her elegant stride. Instead, she seems to have seen it as an opportunity to bag herself a new wardrobe, and then rub everyone’s noses in it. Weird.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria kiss on stage at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool yesterday

No wonder most of this week’s Labour Party conference has been dedicated to reassuring the nation of the Government’s moral credibility, with varying success. Jess Phillips’s peevish defence of the Prime Minister on Good Morning Britain, David Lammy’s assertion that it was necessary for politicians to ‘look their best’: neither entirely convincing.

Things were so bad that at one point Lady Starmer was spotted wearing a pair of M&S trousers in Liverpool, presumably by way of atonement. Poor woman.

Why is it always the wives who have to suffer for their husbands’ mistakes?

Even naysayers like me – who never bought the nice-guy schtick – didn’t think things would sour so fast. Politics, ­tactics, optics, policies – you name it, Starmer makes Rishi Sunak look like a model of ­propriety and stability.

Matters weren’t much helped yesterday when, in a speech that droned on for what seemed like hours and seemed mainly to consist of a list of past Tory failures alongside vague reminiscences about the Lake District and flutes, he accidentally referred to hostages in Gaza as ‘sausages’. Perhaps his aides have kept him on that election diet for rather too long.

But that wasn’t all. The PM was supercilious and dismissive of so-called Wardrobegate. ‘Mere glitter on a shirt cuff’, was how he described it, swatting away ­legitimate concerns about his judgment. He talked about ‘a government of service’.

Was that room service, I vaguely wondered, as the camera panned to Angela Rayner.

The pair dine together for breakfast in their hotel yesterday ahead of Sir Keir’s keynote speech

No wonder Sir Keir’s approval ratings have plummeted – down 45 per cent since July. The British public were led to believe they were purchasing a trusty Volvo, but turns out they’ve driven home a clapped out Soviet-era Lada with a never-ending list of urgent advisories.

It’s not just Starmer, of course. Collectively the new Cabinet are already more scandal-ridden than the entire back-catalogue of Heat magazine, in no small part thanks to the efforts of our redoubtable Deputy Prime Minister, Rayner, who seems to believe that her working-class credentials give her free rein to do ­whatever she pleases, whether that be partying the night away in Ibiza or entertaining a male colleague at Lord Alli’s £2.5million Manhattan penthouse.

Then there’s Rachel Reeves and the questions over her fiscal ­competence (that parliamentary credit card), Sue Gray and her bumper pay rise, all those friends and family (including Reeves’s own sister) suddenly parachuted into senior positions within the Government and the civil service.

Meanwhile Lord Alli, whose generosity doesn’t stop at Starmer and Rayner but also includes David Lammy, Ed ­Miliband, Wes Streeting and ­others, gets to host parties for ­fellow Labour donors in the rose garden at No 10. 

They all have their fingers in the pie to some extent; but it’s Starmer who leads the party, and Starmer who sets the tone. It’s from Starmer that all these decisions flow, it’s his judgment above all others that is in question here. And yet, as we saw from yesterday’s ­conference speech, he considers himself above reproach.

This wouldn’t matter quite so much had he not cast himself throughout the election ­campaign as an unimpeachable man of the people, champion of the oppressed, defender of the weak and general all-round saint.

In practice, he has shown ­himself to be almost the exact opposite. He gives money to public sector workers backed by well-organised, well-funded and robust unions – while taking away from helpless pensioners who have no one to turn to.

He has attacked the ambitions of the middle classes by slapping VAT on school fees while fast-tracking the children of his allies via an old boys’ (and girls’) network every bit as cliquey as David Cameron’s ‘chumocracy’ of Old Etonians; and he has shown himself to have a complete blind spot when it comes to his own probity.

What was it Starmer said about the rose garden at No 10 back in the summer when he delivered another sanctimonious address to the nation?

‘Remember the pictures just over there, of the wine and the food?’ he intoned, referring to so-called lockdown parties under Boris Johnson. ‘Well, this garden and this building are now back in your service.’ What he neglected to add was ‘provided you have £300,000-odd to spare’.

The Prime Minister and Lady Starmer are appear in good spirits as they chat to conference guests

I ask you: what’s more morally questionable? Having a few impromptu drinks with work ­colleagues after an exhausting day dealing with the worst healthcare crisis in living ­memory, as the Tories did; or allowing a wealthy donor access to the ­corridors of power so he can show off to his rich mates in exchange for a new wardrobe?

Politicians are not renowned for their self-knowledge, but if Starmer can’t see the hypocrisy in that, if he won’t even entertain the notion of his own error of judgment, then he’s more deluded than most.

It also doesn’t bode well for the next few years. I’ve known one or two prime ministers in my time, and it usually takes them at least 18 months to get to this stage of megalomania, where they become simply incapable of understanding where they might be going wrong, insulated by power and sycophancy.

Starmer seems to have managed it in under three months. Things, I fear, can only get worse.