“Westminster is a cocoon. Lots of people in lovely jobs, so it becomes easy to forget the world outside.” Catherine West should know. She’s been an MP for 11 years, even if you hadn’t heard of her until this weekend when the Labour backbencher threatened Keir Starmer for the leadership, firing the first shots in the civil war that now engulfs the government. Before Wes Streeting broke cover, before Andy Burnham boarded that train to Euston, there was Catherine West.

Ever since, she has been pelted with insults. But, when we spoke this weekend, she was not only self-aware, it was one of the few times this week that I’ve heard a Labour politician grasp that what’s at stake goes beyond who sits where at the cabinet table, or how their party is polling: it’s about who leads the UK into the 2030s.

Last week’s elections underlined one thing: Starmer is on course to lose badly to Nigel Farage and his politics of ethnic division. All Downing Street’s flag-waving and poison-dripping about immigrants has failed. The outcome that most horrifies Labour MPs – not just losing power, but handing it to Reform – looms ever larger.

Yet there was not even a smoke ring of a plan to meaningfully change course, just the same old names playing their long and complicated chess games: waiting for scandals to fade from memory, waiting for the king’s speech followed by the five days of debate, waiting for the parliamentary recess to start next week.

“We could all fall asleep,” says West, “then wake up in three years to see the electoral map turn light blue.” So she slammed her fist down on the table and sent the chess pieces flying.

Westminster is a cocoon. It is the phrase that sums up this period: our........

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