It’s far from certain that Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership will survive the week. Indeed, as I write this on Monday afternoon, despite colleagues including Angela Rayner, Shabana Mahmood, Ed Miliband and the rest of his Cabinet rallying behind him, it’s far from certain that he will survive until you read these words. 

The current crisis – appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US despite his previous friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the loss of his Chief of Staff on Sunday followed by his Director of Communications on Monday morning, then Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s call for Starmer himself to go that afternoon – may be the trigger. But this isn’t the original source of the Prime Minister’s troubles.

This isn’t just some black swan scandal, whipping into Westminster to unseat an otherwise secure leader. It’s a product of the Prime Minister’s decline from the status of landslide winner to historically unpopular leader in the course of just 18 months.

And Starmer really is staggeringly unpopular. His approval ratings are simply dire: 71 per cent of people think he is doing a bad job, versus 19 per cent who think he is doing well, according to YouGov. Opinium records him as having become more unpopular, and faster, than Theresa May, Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak.

So if you’re thinking “good riddance”, you aren’t alone. High taxes and borrowing, paralysis on welfare reform, a stubbornly high cost of living, rising unemployment and factional in-fighting – along with a sense of........

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