The prime minister appears to know less about Brexit than Simon Cowell

There was a touch of the nasty talent show judge about Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions this week, when Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts asked: “Is there any belief he holds which survives a week in Downing Street?” and the PM shot back: “Yes, the belief that she talks rubbish.”

Supporters of the Welsh independence party affected to be gravely affronted, but the snarky quip was hardly the most offensive thing Starmer had come up with in recent days. In a No 10 press conference on Monday he used the phrase “island of strangers” during a speech on immigration, regrettably echoing Enoch Powell’s remark during his 1968 “rivers of blood” speech, in which he imagined that at some point in a multicultural future, British white people would find themselves “made strangers in their own country”.

It barely seems to matter that Starmer’s call for “a nation that walks forward together” had little in common with Powell’s plea for the races to be kept apart, or that Labour’s new immigration crackdown has got plenty to do with taking the sting out of Brexiteer complaints about the reciprocal youth mobility scheme that will form part of next week’s “Brexit reset” summit with the EU. For many people, Keir Starmer no longer resembles the man they voted for.

Speaking of nasty talent show judges and people who no longer look like themselves, Simon Cowell said his piece on Brexit this week. Speaking on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent judge said he believed the public “didn’t really understand what they were voting for” in the 2016 referendum. He added: “I think if it was to happen again, I believe that we would vote to stay with Europe… so let’s have [another] referendum. I really mean that.”

Cowell then suggested that if another vote were to take place, he’d organise a TV debate show called “You The Jury”, bringing together “highly intelligent individuals to present both sides of the argument”. It sounds less riveting than my new reality TV concept Island Of Strangers, in which 1,000 people who don’t know each other are deposited on a desert island and try to uncover the identity of the only one of them who still plans to vote Labour.

Even as he prepares to welcome leading European Union figures on Monday, Starmer has unveiled an immigration policy (called “immoral and stupid” by TNE’s Jonty Bloom) that makes rejoining the EU and free movement feel further away than ever. Did anyone think that a Remainer Labour prime minister would appear to know less about Brexit than Simon Cowell?