All they can think about is who’ll be promoted. Ministers are going in to see Andy Burnham but not one by one. Too little time for that. Instead they are ushered into the Presence in groups of three or four.

At the Spectator magazine’s garden party on Wednesday, one asked another, ‘Have you had your audience with the King?’ The King of the North, that is.

At the Commons despatch box Peter Kyle, Trade Secretary, mulled pessimistically on his prospects. A Conservative, John Cooper (Dumfries & Galloway), had just asked a question about teenage jobs. Mr Cooper disclosed that as a boy he played in pop bands. 

A melancholy Mr Kyle recalled that his own first job was collecting eggs at a battery-chicken farm. ‘I hope I can take a different path when I move away from the current profession,’ he mumbled without much confidence. From battery chickens to backbench MP: the voyage has a certain circularity.

Job insecurity gnaws at their footings. The serendipity, the sheer unfairness of it all. Ministerial jobs are dished out randomly or on personal connections rather than on merit.

They do not see the irony in the fact that they impose Marxist egalitarianism on the rest of us but hate it when something similar applies to their own dismal prospects.

The great complaint rising in their throats, when they see rivals promoted for no obvious reason, is that they themselves would be more dazzling. ‘Why not MEEEE?’ 

Among the trade ministers was Halifax’s Kate Dearden, 32, a some-time student politician who became an assistant to Labour ministers and worked for a trade union.

PM-in-waiting Andy Burnham spoke at the People’s History Museum in Manchester on Monday

At the Commons despatch box Peter Kyle, Trade Secretary, mulled pessimistically on his prospects, writes Quentin Letts

At the despatch box she projected no distinctive character. Just said ‘going forwards’ a lot and gave off low-level northern grievance vibes. Heck, Eyelashes Andy will probably make her Lord Chancellor. 

Mr Kyle, 55, is that suave salesman prone to skinny ties and powder-blue suits. Normally full of talk, he was a Blair-era special adviser and a friend of Peter Mandelson. Those things don’t help as much these days.

Poor Kyle. Give him a flowery shirt, crocodile shoes and a few more squirts of Paco Rabanne and he could be the manager of a Juan-les-Pins nightclub. 

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Mind you, Brexit has made such career moves more difficult. No wonder he wants ‘closer ties’ with the EU.

Beside him sat his minister of state, Chris Bryant, nine years older. Everyone has quite forgotten, thank goodness, that youthful incident of the underpants. The former Rev Bryant has been an MP since 2001 and is well read.

Why has he never made it to Cabinet? Too brimming with confidence? Too camp? Surely those things help in Parliament. 

He’s entertaining, an instant communicator, has the ability to distil an argument into a couple of sentences and to make it memorable. An Opposition spokesman accused him of evasion, telling him: ‘That was less of an answer, more of an interpretive dance.’

Ballerina Bryant, a champion of the arts, replied in a trice: ‘There’s nothing wrong with interpretive dance.’ Can we imagine stodgy Sir Keir coming up with that sort of flourish?

The Starmer Cabinet could have done with Mr Bryant’s panache, yet he has never won promotion to the top table. Will Eyelashes Andy go for him? Will Underpants Man finally have lift-off?

The Starmer Cabinet could have done with Chris Bryant’s panache, Quentin Letts writes, yet he has never won promotion to the top table

It would be merited yet one doubts it. Mr Bryant went to public school. He is southern. And possibly not assiduous enough in the self-abasement you need in a kingly court.

Zubir Ahmed (Lab, Glasgow SW), 45, asked a question. Nothing special, yet people say he will be promoted. Perhaps he started the rumours himself. 

Hodge Hill’s Liam Byrne, 55, was more impressive. Yet no one speculates about a return to Cabinet for him. In 2010 he left a light-hearted ‘there is no money’ note for his Lib Dem successor at the Treasury.

The Coalition government used it to horrible advantage. One understandable error, a ministerial career wrecked.

You can sometimes see why politicians go mad.