‘I’ve been called an iron fist inside of a velvet glove,” claims Kathy Hochul.

Really? By whom? Video, or it never happened.

But wait — here’s more: “Sometimes the glove comes off, sometimes it doesn’t have to. We can handle Albany,” the governor continued.

Ha. That’s what Eliot Spitzer thought. The self-proclaimed “steamroller” was going to flatten the Capitol, but Albany had ground him down to a nub long before that hotel hooker put an end to his pretensions.

Here’s the thing: If you have to say you’re tough, you probably aren’t. And there’s nothing in the record to suggest Kathy Hochul is.

Indeed, Hochul made her fanciful claim just after becoming the first governor in modern times to have a top judicial selection rejected by the state Senate.

And not just rejected. Hochul’s nomination of Hector LaSalle as chief judge of the Court of Appeals was slapped aside with casual contempt. LaSalle — a bona fide liberal by any reasonable standard — was deemed insufficiently “progressive” for current legislative tastes.

But there’s more to it than that. Hochul’s humiliation clearly was a demonstration of power. Albany is gearing up to brutalize her already reckless $227 billion budget — and now the question is this: Can the governor successfully resist another round of irresponsible legislative conduct?

Certainly, the process is front-end-loaded in Hochul’s favor. Constitutionally, New York is a strong-governor state; its web of budgeting, appointment and related statutes combine with shamelessly permissive campaign-contribution laws to put the Legislature at a distinct nominal disadvantage.

Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, played that piano like Mozart — for better or for worse — but it’s not clear that Krazy Kat is even up to chopsticks.

This is the governor, after all, who late last year delivered the juiciest plum possible — a legislative pay raise — without gaining anything obvious in return. Nothing.

Lacks substance

It was an inauspicious — but portentous — performance.

Now she faces an array of well-connected special interests determined to carve big bucks, and other concessions, from an always accommodating Legislature. Will Hochul even recognize her budget when the process is over?

Beyond that, is Hochul willing — to say nothing of able — to deliver on critically important policy proposals that’s she’s advanced? Two of them — true criminal justice reform and charter school expansion — would test the skills and stamina of any governor in New York’s long and always fraught political history.

But Hochul on Friday wandered off again, going on about the global environment: “The fight against climate change demands bold action,” she tweeted. Perhaps, but the climate that truly needs changing — the one she can do something about — is the pall of fear imposed on the streets of New York by a ­progressive legislative cabal in 2019.

Got an iron fist, Governor? Put it to work reforming bail “reform,” and rolling back the other corrosive criminal justice changes made back then.

And maybe pound the teachers unions — and their legislative lackeys — on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of children now passing through New York’s scandalously underperforming public schools.

Heh. As if.

Kathy Hochul has been governor in her own right for almost two months now — on top of 16 months as Cuomo’s accidental successor. If there is substance there, it would be apparent by now. But it is not.

Iron fist, indeed.