Sir Keir Starmer, never knowingly innovative, unveiled his Blair-tribute pledge card in Essex at an opera-rehearsal space. It ain’t over until Emily Thornberry sings?

Alas, shadow attorney general Emily was not given a slot, though she eyed the lectern hungrily. Nor did we hear from David Lammy, the Henry Kissinger de nos jours. Mr Lammy sat there looking under-loved.

Purfleet railway station swarmed with men in dark suits and red ties. Starmerites dress like Gordon Brown. Soon they’ll be issued with the sort of notepads and pencils North Koreans hold when craning to catch Kim Jong Un’s every pearl.

Keir Starmer unveils his ‘My First Steps For Change’ campaign, involving six key pledges

The pledge card is a paper effort that pulls apart, concertina-style, to reveal its important pronouncements. Its glossy outer shell carries a snapshot of the nasal knight holding in his tummy while doing a Colin-Firth-in-Kingsman pose.

‘My first steps,’ says the slogan. Labour strategy aces perhaps did not know that this is the name of a clothes label for babies.

The black-draped venue contained activists, shadow ministers and the filthy Press. An audience, perhaps 120 in all, was seated in a square around a dais and lectern. Television viewers may have imagined, from the orators’ roving eyes and apparently inter-active smiles, that the speakers were addressing a large hall of rapturous onlookers.

In fact the only people in front of them were a few yawning reporters, some camera operators and, beyond them, a blank wall. As a dramatic construct, it was shamelessly fake.

Angela Rayner made a rare outing, having been under wraps since her housing scandal. She gazed ecstatically at the blank wall and bellowed: ‘Labour will never take you for granted’. The blank wall no doubt found this most reassuring.

As each shadow minister came waddling over to speak, it felt like auditions for a village play. Rachel Reeves stomped up, did a weird blink and told the blank wall that the Tories had made a £46billion commitment to scrap national insurance.

They haven’t, actually, but Ms Reeves’ claim was enough to have Wes Streeting shaking his head and blinking in Stan Laurel sorrow.

Yvette Cooper wobbled her head and told us off, as if we had forgotten to flush her loo. Bridget Phillipson, education spokesman, sashayed to the dais like Jayne Mansfield and almost rubbed her flanks against the lectern.

Ed Miliband plainly thought he was back doing a party leader’s conference speech. He went mad, waggling his left forefinger (it is as long as a saveloy) at the blank wall as he enthused about green policies. Rachel Reeves adopted an Andrei Gromyko grimace.

The Labour leader with his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, left, and deputy, Angela Rayner

We heard nothing about foreign policy, farming, defence and little about tax save for the much-pillaged non-doms thing and a plan to kybosh private schools. Nor was there any undertaking to protect the Green Belt.

Instead there was some pro-Starmer gush from a housebuilding tycoon who used to donate doubloons to the Tories but has now switched horses. His company was Thakeham, pronounced Fake ‘Em.

Then, after a speech from a photogenic London School of Economics student who wanted to be a Labour MP, we heard – and heard, and heard – from Sir Keir.

I feared he was never going to stop. He radiated immense self-pleasure and said the word ‘change’ more than a driving instructor. ‘I’m not going to give you gimmicks,’ he quacked in that two-corks-up-yer-nostrils voice. After 50 minutes, gimmicks would have been a blessed relief.

Jings, he’s a snore. A one-man fun-extinguisher. Energy levels in the room slumped so low, almost the only thing still glowing was Ed Mil’s front teeth.

The only animated moment came when a fly landed on his spectacles and he took a swipe at it, saying ‘that was a friendly little thing’.

Sir Keir, in his attacks about the NHS, kept talking about a poor woman in Knutsford who had an ingrowing eyelid. Here in Purfleet, eyelids were shutting faster than high-street banks.

And that, I suppose, is the brilliance of the man. He is going to bore us so much, we won’t think him a danger. I bet the fair Lady Starmer has no trouble sleeping. At night or day.