I just watched Keir Starmer give his most pointless 'speech' yet – it was a waste of time

There’s a non-insignificant part of me that deeply resents writing this piece.

Not because I don’t love my job, but because even mentioning this morning’s ‘speech’ by Keir Starmer feels like I’m merely doing him a huge freebie by promoting what was a big PR exercise that allowed the PM to be photographed next to shiny jet planes and rub shoulders with people wearing medals.

We were dragged to Farnborough International Airshow this morning to hear a speech that even some non-media attendees seemed to struggle to understand why it was being delivered there.

The big announcement, as with so many of Labour’s policies, is that a new quango (that will take a year to set up) will work hand-in-hand with an existing quango to do something for which there is no timetable, no measure of success, no particular set policy direction and no new money.

That in a pithy summary, if I do say so myself, is largely what this Labour Government is shaping up to be. And with good reason. I don’t for a moment suggest that governing is easy, certainly not with the current health of the economy, but with little money in the coffers and numerous red lines on tax rises, prepare to witness a lot of ‘new bodies’, ‘commissions’ and ‘policy reviews’ announced over the next couple of years.

Labour’s rhetoric has been bold, emphatic and optimistic. But looking under the hood of the Starmermobile, instead of finding a shiny and powerful V8, more often than not we are confronted with a weedy G-Wiz electric motor.

Skills England, Sir Keir told us, will now work with the Migration Advisory Committee to “identify current and future skills gaps, put in place plans to address those gaps and reduce our long-term reliance on overseas workers”.

Skills England will also “bring together central and local government training providers and unions working together in broader partnership with business”.

If you’re a politician, public sector official, union baron or lefty lobbyist who loves talking but not much else, boy is this the Government you’ve waited a lifetime to see win office.

The main problem here is that while leftists love saying ‘listen to experts’, I would be gobsmacked if either of these bodies for one moment suggest that what is holding back Britain’s productivity is over-regulation, sky-high production costs and record-high taxes.

What is more frustrating is that we are not being told how to judge success. Asked how long he expects the public to wait before seeing results, Sir Keir repeated his usual mantra: “There is no quick fix on this.”

If you were hoping for a cast iron guarantee that immigration will come down to anywhere near manageable levels by the next election, you would have been sorely disappointed.

Every time a new government comes in we get a tinkering with education policy, skills policy, welfare policy and planning policy. Each time little seems to change because no political leader has been bold enough to consider that businesses may be able to fix most of these challenges themselves without nannying and handholding by the state.

You may have guessed I’m no fan of meddling bodies, but had I been granted a question from the Prime Minister I was hoping to draw his attention to one he used to appear quite a fan of: the IFS.

During the election, the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Paul Johnson warned Labour that it would not wash to enter No. 10 and then claim the economy was in a worse state than they believed as a precursor to breaking pledges on tax.

Mr Johnson pointed out that the books were already open and freely available for anyone to read prior to entering government.

Labour now seems surprisingly keen to ignore this and press ahead with excuse-making, all while handing more powers to the IFS’s cousin, the OBR.

For Sir Keir, it seems, he’s a big fan of expert talking shops, right up until they tell him something he doesn’t already agree with.