According to the bookies, Sir Keir Starmer is odds-on to leave No 10 this year, and if they are right, history might look back on Feb 4 as the day his departure became inevitable.

With two U-turns in the space of a day, with his political guru Morgan McSweeney standing on a trapdoor, and with Angela Rayner biting at his ankles, Sir Keir’s authority has been shredded.

Even before the Mandelson row exploded underneath him, Sir Keir was the least popular prime minister on record, dismissed by the public as useless and by his own MPs as a deadbeat.

Rumours of a leadership challenge had been dominating Labour politics for months, with only the timidity of his rivals keeping him safe. May’s local elections – despite Sir Keir’s attempt to game the result by cancelling lots of them – were seen as the moment of maximum danger.

All that has changed, though, with the wholly avoidable scandal brought down on Labour by Sir Keir’s highly controversial, and possibly career-ending, decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to Washington in February last year.

Sir Keir was the man who promised to “turn the page” on the chaos and scandals that dogged the Conservatives, but instead he has put his party at the centre of the biggest political betrayal since Profumo. The anxiety felt by Labour MPs over the opinion polls (dominated for a year now by Reform UK) has turned to anger.

Whenever prime ministers are toppled mid-term, there is a moment when the mood turns irreversibly against them, even if they manage to limp on for a while longer.

Gordon Rayner, The Telegraph