QUENTIN LETTS: While Mrs Badenoch was speaking, Sir Mel sucked on his lips and gazed in delight

Downing Street’s grip on the agenda has broken down so badly that we had two press conferences from Opposition parties yesterday reacting to a Budget that has not yet been delivered.

Kemi Badenoch applied an extra coat of red lipstick to condemn the Chancellor’s budget speech, which is yet to leave the office. The Tory leader summoned the press to an elegant library on Carlton House Terrace. Perfect shortbread biscuits.

The rest of the event was on air: the claim was built on expectation. In a foggy return to my childhood Latin classes, we were struggling with the future perfect tense.

Ms Badenoch claimed the next budget would lead the country into bankruptcy. The International Monetary Fund won’t have enough spoils to get us out of trouble.

Any taxes that Rachel Reeves imposes will be wiped out by the higher welfare costs that would result from repealing the two child benefit taxes.

Damn this was complicated. Worse than chess. We sketch writers licked our pencils and dutifully noted these future developments. Quantum physics, the branch of science that deals with time travel, has a lot to answer for.

Even Doctor Who scratches his curls and says, ‘Remind me, did this really happen, or are we still in speculation territory?’ he could ask.

Reform’s Nigel Farage held a simultaneous press conference at Church House. Mr Farage jumped out of his Tardis and repeatedly berated Ms Reeves about the things she might be about to do.

Boris Johnson was accused of holding the cake while eating it. This was pre-baking: eating Victoria sponge cake before it was even baked.

This is what happens when the treasury’s perverted doctors, or whoever, leak every detail of the budget to the media.

Ms Badenoch delivered her prophetic remarks alongside Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride. Uncle Melvyn has behaved admirably in recent months. He perfected the pose of silent, jaw-rocking pleasure as he listened to his leader. While Miss Badenoch spoke, Sir Mel sucked her lips and looked amusedly into the middle distance. He might have been a man chewing on particularly delicious salted caramel.

Sir Mel and Miss B actually seem to like each other. This is by no means a given between party leaders and their economic spokespeople. Tony Blair couldn’t stand Gordon Brown. Mrs Thatcher was often at war with her chancellors.

Sir Keir Starmer now treats Miss Reeves like a diseased living laboratory rat. If he watches her closely, it’s only interesting to see how long she can last.

More powerfully built than a few weeks ago, Ms Badenoch was at her liveliest as she attacked two people: Mr Farage and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally. It’s not often that these two find themselves in the same canoe.

Ms Badenoch delivered her prophetic remarks alongside shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride. Uncle Melvyn has behaved admirably in recent months. He perfected the pose of silent, jaw-stoning pleasure while listening to his leader.

Someone asked about Reform’s plan to balance the books by making EU citizens pay more for healthcare here. Miss Badenoch, referring to Nigel: ‘This man doesn’t know what he’s talking about!’

He was only slightly kinder to Archbishop Mullally, who had supported greater outreach in the past.

You might say in a cricket report that Miss Badenoch sent a bouncer to the Archbishop when she first came to the crease. We have to hope he’s wearing a box.

At the reform event, Mr Farage performed the act of prophecy alongside the party’s policy chief, Zia Yusuf. Old Nigel looked tired. There were a lot of ‘obviously’, ‘I mean’ and ‘you know what’. He kept repeating the word ‘very’.

Ms. Reeves was not only ‘out of her depth’ but also ‘absolutely hopelessly out of her depth’. At one point he said ‘time and time and time and time again’.

Young Yusuf preferred a more flamboyant explanation. With a certain emphatic fatigue, he talked at length about ‘line items in the welfare budget’, ‘data points’, ‘deltas’ and ‘non-linear fashion’. When men at the bar talk to me this way, I usually conclude that they are full of wind.