It was Sir John Junor of the Sunday Express who came up with, and no pun intended, “pass the sick bag, Alice.” Sir John habitually dined at the Savoy, and was less than impressed by the egg and chips served up by Alice, canteen lady at the Express.

Had Sir John still been around and present at the recent Tory and Labour conferences, Alice would have received a similar request. Sir John’s boak however, would have had a different cause.

First up was Rishi Sunak. His address and performance would have challenged the strongest constitution. Queasiness set in early, when Mrs S, aka Akshaka Murty, spontaneously “gate-crashed” the conference as hubby’s warm-up act. It was a stroke of luck she had a set of notes in her Louis Vuitton. “Quelle surprise!” feigned Mr Sunak.

Nausea swelled as Mrs S described she and her husband as best friends. She revealed her husband likes nothing better than curling up on the sofa to watch a rom-com, the “cheesier the better”. A weight dropped from my shoulders to learn that, as the economy crashes and burns, the Prime Minister can still channel his inner Hugh Grant.

Worse followed. The Sunaks, combined worth around £730million, are much like the rest of us, and proud of their humble origins. After all, his parents clawed their way up from being respectively, a GP and a pharmacist. Doesn’t sound much like a deprived childhood, wee man.

Tony Blair started all this “we’re just like you,” nonsense with “I’m a pretty straight sort of guy.” David Cameron’s “just call me Dave” blew up in his face when Ashcroft and Oakeshott borrowed his words for their unauthorised, excoriating biography.

The dogs barked and the caravan rolled on, to Liverpool. Blow me, didn’t we find the ever-so-humble Sir Keir Starmer prattling on about his modest origins. Yes, yes, Sir Keir we’ve all heard, ad nauseum, about your mother, the nurse, and your toolmaker father. It was depressingly reminiscent of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, “We lived in one room, all 126 of us.”

Politicians emphasise their humble beginnings because they realise they’re not like us at all. The more honest and self-aware are a touch embarrassed their routes into politics have cut them off from the experiences of most of their fellow citizens.

There’s a cringe factor when the likes of the Prime Minister talk blithely of “hundreds of shovel-ready” construction projects. Mr Sunak would require some on-the-job training to identify which end of the shovel is inserted into the ground.

How things have changed. At one time, the Commons would have been full of working-class heroes with first-hand experience of worlds beyond politics and Westminster. True, the wilful destruction of Britain’s industrial and construction capacity reduced the size and nature of what would have been the working class and the trade union movement. Back then, the likes of “Battling” Bessie Braddock, MP for Liverpool Exchange from 1945 until 1971, could draw on her experience of poverty and factory work fuelling her passionate campaigning for better housing and health. She was undaunted, even when taking on Churchill.

Labour MP Lisa Nandy, rightly, says of Bessie, she “brought her experiences of life in the slums right into the heart of Westminster.” No present-day parliamentarians would have experienced the grinding poverty of Bessie’s childhood. There is a disconnect between the soft life at Westminster and the experiences of many on the outside. Anger, passion, and commitment have been drained. Former Labour cabinet minister Alan Johnson is probably the last major politician to come up the “hard way”.

The Braddocks and Johnsons have been replaced by those whose own careers and advancement are top priority. Sir Keir Starmer has the fire and passion of a back number of The People’s Friend. As things stand, getting to Number 10 is all that matters. Labour needs to recapture the vision, passion, ambition, and sense of fairness of the old-time working-class heroes. Otherwise, even if Labour wins the election, we’re heading for five years of Tory-Lite.