Dressing Sir Keir

Lord Mandelson is said to be behind the gifted-clothes hoo-ha about Lord Alli, the PM and his wife. Nonsense: this is Hamlet without the Prince.

Casey Michael in the Mail on Sunday says that Tony Blair ‘is offering extensive advice to Sir Keir Starmer behind the scenes.’ Alastair Campbell, too - maybe Ali was behind Starmer’s headline-catching visit to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni ostensibly to learn from the right-winger how to deal with immigration. Mandelson - wasn’t it Blair who mused that maybe Mandy wasn’t as good as his sofa cabinet had thought?

Blair fancies himself as an expert on presentation, though his facial expressions and gestures belong in the am-dram classic ‘The Art Of Coarse Acting.’ When George W Bush was buttering him up to obtain Britain’s support for the illegal invasion of Iraq ‘Yo Blair’ presumed to tell the President of the United States how to comport himself, for example to ‘walk wide’ so as to seem more impressive. Bush played along pro tem; he is more psychologically astute and knows how to stroke a man’s vanity; yet what was on his mind was not Richard Burton but Halliburton.

The right-wing media are playing the clothes thing all wrong. Starmer is not materialistic or sensual. What normal youth would go to a Czech Communist work camp instead of lining up half a dozen quickies in one day on an 18-30 beach holiday as a friend of mine once did?

No, I stick to my armchair analysis: Starmer is high-functioning autistic. Mothers who have sons like this despair of getting their boys to change their clothes because of the associated sensory issues that make the lads want to stick with the familiar. Melinda Gates had to force her nerd husband to abandon dressing like a scruff, otherwise Bill would have carried on with the T-shirts.

These guys live in their heads. This is why they are addicted to making models, if not computer programs then human society. If Starmer were older he’d have watched the revolutionary-leftie 1976 TV series ‘Bill Brand’ (screened in the afternoons because it was too radical for prime time) thinking ‘If not now, when?’

Enter Blair the thespian ‘national treasure’, no longer castable as the juvenile lead but taking on the role of Starmer’s director, managing him as Barrage O’Bomber and co. have managed Biden and will (if Trump can be eliminated) manage the giggly airhead ‘joyous’ Kamala.

Starmer will take stage tips; he doesn’t care, so long as he gets us to curtain down. As to costume, the common people do like a show with high production values, don’t they?