KEIR STARMER has handled the far-right riots as a policeman rather than a politician.

Any previous premier would surely have addressed the country in one form or another after such a signal crisis. Margaret Thatcher — even Boris Johnson — would have had something substantive to say, however misjudged.

As for Tony Blair, he felt the need to speak to and for the nation, lip trembling, after the death of the “people’s princess” in a Paris underpass, an event of no general significance at all except in so far as it highlighted the emotional intelligence deficit in the House of Windsor.