Britain is facing the most serious external threat since the Falklands, since Suez, hell maybe even since the Second World War. And what we have to steer us through these brutal, dark and treacherous seas is… erm, Yvette Cooper. Now don’t get me wrong, Yvette is nice. Prim even. But she’s hardly a Kissinger or a Kofi Annan is she?

But this afternoon Yvette will chair a half-hearted meeting of countries keen on freeing up the Straits of Hormuz from Iran’s chokehold on the world’s oil reserves. About 35 countries were invited but quite a few have already pulled out of Yvette’s coalition of the unwilling, on the basis it was too hastily arranged and has no clear direction. Well-intentioned but bumbling.

Which is Yvette all over. A pub footballer when you need a Maradona, a karaoke singer when you need Elvis, a Nissan Micra when you need a Ferrari Testarossa, a student politician when you need a giant of international diplomacy.

In fact that’s the thing about this government isn’t it? There is absolutely no-one who fills you with any confidence they have what it takes in the real world.

Starmer’s cripplingly insecure daily U-turns, Reeve’s tenuous grasp of mathematics, the Housing Minister being wheeled out to talk about Britain’s nuclear deterrent and Iran because the actual defence Minister didn’t have the cohones. Every day more evidence we’ve put the children in charge.

And today it’s the turn of Yvette.

Yvette is one of life’s busybodies, an interferer, a classic I–know-better-than-you lefty. It is instructive that one of the stories she likes to tell is that she organised her first “industrial action” while still at school in Hampshire saying: “I organised a prefect’s strike – because one of the boys was facing the sack for wearing white socks to school.”

But it is even more instructive that her definitive action amounted to this: “we were supposed to be patrolling the school but we huddled in a classroom one lunchtime instead because of Andrew’s socks.”

Because that is what today’s meeting feels like – impotently huddling in a classroom while Iran continues with its supremely well-judged act of asymmetric warfare in the Strait of Hormuz.

(Donald Trump has spent an estimated $30bn on his Iran escapade. Tehran basically only needs a single spike mine bobbing about in the Straits to effectively hold the world to ransom.)

Thing about this war, it’s a long time since a conflict in a very foreign field had such an impact at home.

I filled up my car last night (yes, it’s a diesel, just like Gordon Brown told us to buy) and it cost me £93.

That is suddenly not an inconsiderable expense and basically pees all over Starmer’s impotent tinkerings with the crippling cost of living we are all facing. It is really starting to hurt.

What Yvette proposes to do about it remains to be seen, but it needs to be tough, definitive and achievable.

I’m not holding my breath.

Of course if anyone (and Cameron I’m looking at you here) had had the balls to greenlight fracking on the Fylde Coast and the development of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields in the North Sea we wouldn’t be in anywhere near the trouble we are in.

But, inexplicably, both then and now, our witless idiot politicians were in thrall to a Swedish schoolgirl with an ego the size of a small planet.

But that’s another story for another day.

One thing is for sure though, it’ll be triple Stoli’s all round in the Kremlin right now.