Respect to Tony Blair for waiting so long before he jumped in the back seat and started giving directions to the new Prime Minister. It must have been what, all of two minutes? They don’t move that fast in the pits at Silverstone.

First, the former premier used a newspaper article to punt his idea for ID cards. Next came a speech at the humbly titled Tony Blair Institute for Global Change on how artificial intelligence could save the public sector billions.

So far, Sir Tony (as we must now, rather annoyingly, call him for reasons of consistency) is being treated with the politeness due to a neighbour who peers over the fence and tells you how to cut the grass.

Team Starmer does not need Sir Tony giving them advice in person. With so many old faces from the Blair years popping up in government, it looks like the infiltration work is already done.

Still, given the feelings Sir Tony arouses in some quarters, it would be wise to keep the man himself a suitable distance away. Perhaps Elon Musk can find him something to do in space.

There is another reason to let voicemail do the honours next time Sir Tony calls. Should the new Prime Minister need an ideas guru, a suitable candidate is ready and waiting. One who is wise, inspiring, and possessed of an unparalleled knowledge of top ten hits from the 1970s. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Ken Bruce.

The Greatest Hits Radio DJ earned the thanks of a nation this week when he told his former employers at Radio 2 to grow up and stop trying to be cool.

Read more

Radio 2 is a “state of mind” he told the Beyond the Title podcast. It is for people over 35 with jobs, families and other responsibilities, folk who don’t care about looking uncool.

Well said, Sir Ken (he is not but he should be). In siding with the Dobbies Clubcard set against the clubbers, our Ken has hit the cultural nail on the head.

He also happens to be perfectly in tune with the political mood of the times. Not that he would have intended such a thing - Ken is far too smart to get involved in politics - but here we are anyway.

As we have all heard by now, Britain under Sir Keir Starmer is a serious, grown-up place once more. Gone are those rowdy hooligans with their parties and their proroguing of parliament. In their place are fine upstanding people devoted to public service.

Elected on a promise to end the “chaos” of the Tories, Sir Keir’s first speech as Prime Minister in Downing Street spoke of respect, public service, duty, stability and moderation, and sailing away to “calmer waters”. It could have been an advert for a lovely five-stop European cruise. Pure Radio 2.

Sir Keir is rather more Radios 3 and 4 than Radio 2, but he wouldn’t say no to some Orange Juice and the Smiths if they were on the Radio 2 menu.

Overall, he comes across as serious and hard-working, someone who sticks to the letter of the law. He is the opposite of one of his predecessors, Boris Johnson, whose misplaced frivolity he despised.

The new Prime Minister is a grown-up and proud of it, and he wants his ministers to be the same. Any transgressions and their feet won’t touch the floor, as he was fond of saying on the campaign trail when another Tory scandal erupted.

A fitting soundtrack to these sterner Starmer times is not Things Can Only Get Better, it is Hip to be Square by Huey Lewis and the News. That absolute banger, as the young people say, captures the change of mood as accurately as any opinion poll.

The SNP was way ahead of the trend when it opted for John Swinney as party leader and First Minister, with Kate Forbes as his deputy. It is hard to imagine a more hip to be square duo. Now that they have parked independence and promised to get on with the day job, the pair will make Stakhanov look a lightweight. As for Nicola Sturgeon, she was square, then hip, and that’s when the trouble arguably started.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar will no doubt get with the seriousness programme if he can ever stop smiling for long enough, while his deputy Jackie Baillie is already adept at switching from twinkly-eyed amusement to full-on T-Rex if the occasion requires.

The politicians are doing their bit to be serious, as is the media. I’m not sure how long the latter’s reverence will last. Some commentators lost no time in going full Trump about the result, arguing that being elected with a record low share of the vote was no victory at all. Funny, that. They were never bothered when first past the post returned Conservative governments and left the majority of Scots unrepresented.

Hats off, however, to the restraint being shown towards the Prime Minister’s wife, Victoria, and the Starmer children. It has been a whole week and the only coverage has been about the fashion label “Vic” favours.

In a week stuffed with remarkable images, the sight of hundreds of new Labour MPs in Westminster Hall fair took the breath away. Some called it a family picture, but it was more like a school photo. All those smiles and new suits. All that future ahead of them.

Serious as he is, even Sir Keir has found it hard not to look chuffed this past week. He knows the upbeat mood of the country, such as it is, will not last. So far, the initial speeches aside, the new government is still focussing on the mistakes of the old one. Next comes the hard part - taking its own decisions and being held accountable for them. Mistakes will be made.

Expectations were managed during the campaign and are still being managed in government. As Sir Keir said, changing a country is not like flicking a switch. It is the grown-up thing to say, but it may surprise ministers how quickly it gets old.

But for now, as they would have said on the old, uncool Radio 2, here’s Bill Withers telling everyone to have a Lovely Day …