Keir Starmer's Labour are so useless it's almost cruel to have a pop at Rachel Reeves

Parallels are often drawn between sports and politics, but they only hold up to a point. A breaking point. Because politics is infinitely more ruthless than sport. Example. I'll always remember the closing minutes of a school hockey match I was playing in. Our team was 8-0 up, and for the umpteenth time our main scorer found herself literally in front of an open goal, keeper and defenders sprawled helplessly in her wake. She turned, met the goalie's defeated, ashamed eyes, hesitated, and then whacked the ball into touch.

"I just couldn't do it," she explained later in the dressing room. "I just couldn't do it to her. We'd won. She'd had enough." No such tender mercies on display at PMQs in the Commons this week. Faced with an openly weeping, swollen-eyed Rachel Reeves sitting directly opposite, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch stuck it straight to the distraught Chancellor.

Telling Ms Reeves that she looked "absolutely miserable", Kemi turned to the Prime Minister and asked if his Chancellor would still be in her job by the next election. Talk about kicking someone when they're down.

Presumably well able to hear the snuffles and sniffles and gasps directly behind him, Sir Keir Starmer offered no such assurance. See what I mean? Ruthless.

And here I sit, your apolitical weekly commentator on these pages (truly, folks - neither Richard nor I hold allegiance to any party and never have done) faced with a wide-open goal after yet another screeching government U-turn.

This latest probably the most humiliating of all: a government with a stonking parliamentary majority of 165 humbled by its own MPs. Forced to abandon its flagship cost-cutting welfare reforms.

Reforms which had been personally and repeatedly endorsed by PM, Chancellor, and practically every other front-bencher you could shake a stick at.

I can see at least three places where the ball could oh-so-easily be slotted into the back of Labour's sagging, gaping net.

The spot where backbench defenders should be, not sulking en masse at the other end of the pitch. The opposite side where the Chancellor is guaranteed to fumble any shot.

And that inviting bit in the middle where the team captain spins around in ever decreasing circles, oblivious to the incoming ball until it's far too late to stop it. It's too easy.

I almost feel guilty. It should be harder than this to score penalties against a government after barely a year in power and with a whopping majority. But we have to state facts. Which are? This lot are U-turn USELESS.

And we haven't even got to a discussion about the small boats. Certainly no U-turns going on across the Channel, that's for sure.