Starmer gulped! He actually gulped, like a Beano schoolboy who knew he’d been rumbled and was about to get the cane from Teach.

In this case Teach was of course Tory leader Kemi Badenoch who was rather brilliantly schooling the ennobled millionaire socialist in the ways of straight-shooting politics.

Kemi chose immigration as her issue of choice for this afternoon’s Prime Minister’s Questions. Well of course she did. A very well-known TV pundit subsequently claimed to be “very surprised” at the choice, adding live on air “given that there are farmers demonstrating outside the Houses of Parliament.”

Which of course was fabulously typical London luvviedom writ large. The tractors might be making a big noise outside your posh SW1 offices love, but what issue do you think is keeping the good folk of Preston, or St Ives, or Billericay, or indeed Peterborough and Altrincham awake at night?

The inheritance tax complaints of some (absolutely not all) farmers who count money in millions or, say, 300 completely unvetted “asylum seekers” dumped in a hotel in your town under a shroud of civil service secrecy which shames our democracy.

Yep, me too.

And so Kemi went for the jugular accusing Sir Keir of siding with imported murderers, rapists and assorted criminals rather than the British public.

“Four years ago he sent a letter demanding foreign criminals be allowed to stay here,” she calmly asserted.

“That rapists and murderers be allowed to stay here.”

“One of these criminals,” she said, “was Ernesto Elliot, who had 17 convictions, including for knife crime, and his deportation was blocked.

“He went on to murder someone.”

I have rarely seen the Prime Minister so grim-faced, his lips almost disappeared into his skull – he’d been proper rumbled and had no answer.

So he didn’t bother troubling Kemi, or by extension the British public, with one.. and offered instead some generic sideswipe about the Tories’ handling of immigration.

Now, the Tories’ handling of immigration was indeed catastrophic, stupid, lazy and deservedly got them kicked out of office.

But at what point I wonder, what date, will the Labour Party have to stop blaming the previous incumbents and start taking grown-up responsibility?

Anyway the rambling reply wasn’t cutting any ice with Kemi who went about her business like a professional prizefighter:

“HE defended terrorists!” she jabbed.

“HE boasted that he took the last Labour government to court for cutting asylum seekers’ benefits!” came her left hook.

“HE argued all immigration law had a racist undertone!” came her right cross.

“HE voted against life sentences for people smugglers!” came the brutal body blows.

And, with a final knockout uppercut, “HE voted against more than 100 measures to control immigration!”

Poor Keir wasn’t just on the ropes he was on the canvas with his sidemen grabbing the smelling salts.

And all because Kemi had chosen the right topic, the cause du jour, the absolute zeitgeist political football.

The one people, actual people, care about.

Good politics.

Not hand-wringing virtue signalling titling at windmills – which was a political stance perfectly exemplified a little later in PMQs oddly by the Right Honourable Social Democratic & Labour Party Member for Belfast South and Mid Down Claire Hanna, who banged on about helping our friends in Palestine and doing something bad to Israel.

Like we could, even if we wanted to. And like anyone outside of a few vested interests and a few radicals (and a few threat-to-Britain dangerous radicals to boot) really, truly, cares anyway.

Yes of course every Brit wants peace in the Middle East and goodwill to all men.

But really care? Really lie-awake at night care?

No, for that look to Green MP Ellie Chowns who’s tale of her GP calling 999 for an ambulance to be sent to a life-or-death patient only to be told “there aren’t any” – now that should be giving every right-thinking Brit insomnia.