RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: After this week's TV debate, the prospect of five years of tetchy, intolerant Starmer scares the life out of me in a way Blair and Brown never did

OK, I admit it. I’ve been sleepwalking my way through this election. I even took a week off to avoid it.

For a few blissful days I went the full Tom Robinson, giving up reading the papers and not watching the news on TV.

Like most of you I’ve assumed the result is a foregone conclusion. The country is sick and tired of the Tories and Starmer is a shoo-in.

On Tuesday, I tried to make light of it all. Don’t worry, be happy. We’ve lived through worse and survived.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during last night's head-to-head debate with Rishi Sunak

Given the choice between a music-to-slash-your-wrists-by polemic and a Genial Uncle Rich song-and-dance act, I generally favour a walk on the bright side. Why write a column I wouldn’t want to read? Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3, and all that.

But then I made the mistake of watching Wednesday night’s debate. Or perhaps not, because the scales not only fell from my eyes, they rolled across the living room floor and disappeared under the telly.

The prospect of at least five years of Starmer government scares the life out of me, in a way that the Blair/Brown double act never did. Nor did their enforcers.

I used to sit next to Brown’s bagman Charlie Whelan at Spurs. (He’s an old mate, going on over 40 years, even though politically we agree on three parts of Sweet FA.)

Alastair Campbell (Latest podcast, The Rest is a Complete Parcel of Bollo) held no horrors for me. If you know your history . . .

When Starmer became Labour leader, I dubbed him Max Headroom, after the computer-generated MTV disc/video jockey — and not just because of his ridiculous Cornetto-style hairdo, which would have looked stupid on a man half his age.

Here was a self-styled homme serieux gelled up like a member of Duran Duran, circa 1983. Say what you like about Starmer, but no one has ever confused him with for a New Romantic.

Sadly, the Max Headroom moniker never caught on, so I dropped it. No point flogging a dead wossname. Just as well, probably, because despite being computer-generated, it would have gone some way to humanising him.

On Wednesday night he came across, at best, as Michael Rennie in The Day The Earth Stood Still, an alien sent to save the planet from we mere mortals.

At worst he was like one of those World War II German rocket scientists in tin-rimmed-glasses, usually played by Donald Pleasance in a dodgy syrup.

Although, come to think of it, there was more than a hint of a dour apparatchik in a gaberdine mac from The Lives Of Others, the terrifying movie about East Germany’s box-ticking, phone-tapping, shop-your-parents secret police before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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What we saw — or at least I did — during that debate was a glimpse of a Starmer-Chameleon led future, a tetchy, intolerant technocrat who operates within tram-lines, abhors dissent from his own fixed Left-wing agenda and is prepared to use the law to crush anyone and everyone who veers from his path of righteousness.

The flashes of nastiness were never far from the surface, especially when directing his noises-off ‘liar’ jibes at Sunak.

Sycophantic commentators elsewhere have tried to paint a soft-focus portrait of the ‘real’ Keir Starmer, desperate to ingratiate themselves with an incoming source of stories and preferment. Knock yourself out, boys and girls.

For a start, I don’t trust anyone who calls football ‘footie’. Doesn’t sound like the son of a toolmaker to me. A bit Flashman, to my mind. Oh, yes, I forgot. Starmer’s grammar school went fee-paying while he was in the fourth-form. Stroke of luck, that, and no VAT in those days, unlike a week today under a Labour government.

Leave him alone, he’s a family man, they say. Yes, but his bite’s going to be much worse than his bark.

And, while we’re at it, what do we really know about his background, or his family life?

His wife appears to be named after the pub in EastEnders and he’s got two kids, a son and a daughter. And, er, that’s it.

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We learned much, much more about the Swiss Family Blair. Too much information (in the case of Cherie’s ‘faulty contraceptive equipment’ she took to Balmoral before getting up the duff with the youngest).

The Brown/Major/Thatcher clans were well pored over. Mrs Rishi’s tax affairs are a matter of public record and Boris’s and Liz Truss’s assorted legovers have added hugely to the gaiety of the nation.

But Starmerland is a wonderland where he’ll toot a lawsuit at you if you even scratch the surface.

Although did he mention his dad was a toolmaker? Maybe not, unless I missed it.

Then there’s Starmer’s legal career. He’s a complete and utter lawyer. Can’t say I’ve followed it closely, but he’s had a few dubious clients over the year.

True, that doesn’t make him a bad person. George Carman QC, arguably our greatest libel lawyer, once represented me. (We won on away goals. Me and Ken Dodd, then, though Doddy was playing at home.)

But I don’t buy the ‘cab rank’ argument either. Depends on where you park your cab. If you park up outside Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair you’ll pick up Kate Moss. If you linger outside Finsbury Park Mosque, you’ll end up with Abu Qatada or one of his oppos. And it’s no good arguing you don’t go south of the river.

When Starmer was working at Doughty Street Chambers after Blair brought in the yuman rights act, he wasn’t after a little light conveyancing or the odd leylandii boundary dispute.

Nope, what Starmer wants is a complete transformation of Britain into an EU-compliant, illegal-immigrant friendly, even higher-taxed socialist superstate, with Leveson 2, 3 and 4 (is there a four?) to gag our Free Press.

And what comes after this stone-faced socialist stooge is going to be ten times worse.

Ange Rayner? Do me a favour. Every Boy And Girl In The Bubble’s fave, ‘Labour moderate’ Wes Streeting, Starmer’s likely successor?

Jan Moir’s column about this vicious, preening drama queen summed up Streeting for me. These are not good people. We are all going to Hell, etc.

What convinced me was Mrs Littlejohn, a far shrewer judge of politics than me, expressing her disgust at Starmer stating he’d rather a close relative of his — Queen Vic, anonymous son or daughter? — waited for an NHS bed than go private. Bring on Max Headroom.

My colleague Sandra Parsons says Britain is about to become the KSSR — Keir Starmer’s Socialist Republic. As The Beatles didn’t sing: Flew out to Miami Beach, BOAC. Will the last one to leave, please turn off the lights . . .

This column wouldn’t dream of telling anyone how to vote. You all know I’m no friend of the Tories, although I am a headbanging Brexiteer, so Farage’s Mutineers would get my backing wherever they stand against the Rejoiner refuseniks.

And after watching Starmer on Wednesday night, be afraid, be very afraid, of what you wish for . . . sleepwalking is not a way to behave.