Ask friends of Keir Starmer what they make of him and one of the first things they will say is that he can be incredibly kind. I’ve heard it time and again.

The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock described how Starmer was among the first to turn up on his doorstep after he lost his beloved wife, Glenys. “You don’t have time for this; you’ve got a party to lead,” Kinnock told him.

Then there was the former employee who started crying over a cup of coffee as she recounted to me how warm her boss had been when she lost a loved one.

The lawyer Parvais Jabbar, who has been a close friend of the PM’s for almost 30 years since they started working together to oppose the death penalty around the world, offered the same opinion. “On a personal level, Keir is the opposite of ruthless,” he said.

But on a political level?

Having spoken to more than 100 sources for my paperback Taken As Red, which tracks Starmer’s career from the moment he arrived in Westminster as a backbench MP through shadow cabinet roles to becoming Labour leader and then his first year as prime minister, I discovered his willingness to be politically ruthless, especially when it came to fixing things that had gone wrong. And right now it feels as if things have gone very wrong for the prime minister.

On the eve of the anniversary of his first year in power, Starmer has not just suffered a humiliating climbdown over flagship reforms. His party is also

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