Keir Starmer has me scratching my head - impossible to grasp his latest plan

I don't know about you, but I'm still scratching my head over Sir Keir Starmer's intervention in the war in Gaza this week. I can't make sense of it. The PM asserts that if Israel does not agree to a ceasefire in Gaza by the end of next month, the UK will declare Palestine to be a sovereign state. Well sorry, Keir, but either you believe in a Palestinian state or you don't. Why is it dependent on what Israel does or doesn't do over the next few weeks? In any case, it's an almost wholly meaningless challenge to Tel Aviv.

Because even the blindest of optimists in Downing Street knows that Israel is about as likely to halt its operations in Gaza this side of Christmas as it is to abandon the hostages to their fate. Some things are so far from reality as to be a waste of time even mentioning. Israel has a lot more business in Gaza to attend to before it will even think about another ceasefire.

We're talking months, minimum. Starmer could have cut straight to the chase and simply recognised Palestine as a sovereign state now, as France's President Macron did last week.

Why impose conditions you know will never be met? It's pure gesture politics. And even if (or when) the UK follows France and 146 other countries in acknowledging the state of Palestine, what then?

What difference will it make? More gesture politics. Recognition cannot, by itself, somehow wave a magic wand and create a sovereign state out of rubble and dust.

You need other things in place first. Believe me, I'm no expert on the Middle East, but even I know what's conspicuously missing here. A functioning government, for starters.

Palestine has two organisations jockeying for power - the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza. The first recognises Israel; the second tries to destroy it.

Defined borders are an internationally agreed requirement too. Palestine doesn't have them. Israeli settlers fragment Palestinian towns and cities, East Jerusalem is, to all intents and purposes, annexed, the West Bank is carved up and as for Gaza... well... There's also the sheer one-sided nature of his ultimatum.

Fine, call for Israel to enact a ceasefire. But this is a war of two sides. What about Hamas? No demands for them to comply with? Really? What about handing back the remaining hostages (alive and dead)?

How about a commitment never to launch a pogrom like October 7 again? (Hamas has stated that if it could, it would repeat the atrocity).

We all wish fervently for peace in Gaza and an end to the death and starvation and horrible suffering. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

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Pet hate No.1,456: radio interviewees beginning their replies to questions with the word "so" - ungrammatical, illogical, unnecessary and utterly infuriating.

Q: "When did you realise the project was in trouble?" A: "So..." Or: Q: "Why do you believe the King should abdicate?" A: "So..." Grrrr... But I'm beginning to think that the era of the superfluous "so" has peaked.

You definitely hear fewer of them on the airwaves now. Last year "so's" popped up everywhere. The other morning I didn't hear a single one on the Today programme. Progress.

Replacing it in the enraging stakes, though, is "mmm". This is exclusively a presenter's tic. An interviewee completes their answer, only to be met with a strangely disinterested, abstracted "mmm" from the host.

It's as if they're thinking about something completely different. There's something indefinably but unmistakably rude and offhand about it. I hate it.

But easily the most irritating new kid on the radio block is the interviewee who insists on prefacing their opening answer with the unctuous and insincere: "First, may I thank you for inviting me onto your programme?"

They say this even when they know they're about to get a grilling. It's false, it's infuriating, and actually there's only one suitable response. "Mmm."

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"We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. For us, they do not exist." Queen Victoria's splendid words of withering contempt for and rejection of the very notion of failure should be emblazoned on the back of every Lioness shirt.

They may have been uttered at a particularly tricky moment during the Boer War 125 years ago, but they perfectly encapsulate Sarina Wiegman's squad's fantastic esprit de corps at the Euros.

To my shame, I must have thought dejectedly at least a dozen times during the tournament: "We've lost."

Wiegman's women probably couldn't even spell "defeat". What grit. What spirit. What sheer bloody-mindedness. Proud to be English? You bet. Damehoods all round, please.