Sir Keir Starmer has fallen hard since his moment of glory, just 19 months ago, when he led Labour to a landslide election victory.

He is just one of four leaders ever to have secured a Commons majority for Labour. And yet, this week he was on the brink of losing his job. Even now he has every chance of being his party’s shortest-serving prime minister in history.

Starmer is partly at fault for his plight. He entered No 10 with little sense of what he actually wanted to do with the job. Though he acknowledged that “tough decisions” would be needed, he never prepared the ground for them with the public or his MPs – leading to the worst of both worlds on issues such as winter fuel payments, which he axed for most pensioners but then ended up bringing back.

And there are, of course, serious questions about his judgement, in particular the ill-fated decision to make Peter Mandelson his ambassador to Washington despite what was already known about the New Labour veteran’s ties to millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The stay of execution he was given by his Cabinet may not last long. There is rumbling discontent in the........

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