The welfare bill has gone through, but what is on the minds of most Labour MPs and supporters is how did we get into this appalling mess over disability benefits? A key factor has been the immense lack of judgment of the party’s real decision-makers, the team in the leader’s office, fuelled by their overweening arrogance. The egos of the young men cloistering Keir Starmer have clearly been inflated by the multitude of articles written by sycophantic commentators desperate to secure access to the new regime.

However, the seeds of this debacle were sown by the Treasury’s capture of the incoming government, enabling officials to bring back the same old austerity agenda of benefit cuts that they developed for George Osborne.

They misguidedly thought disabled people would again be an easy target, but this time they totally miscalculated the deep-seated adherence of Labour members to the principle and tradition of standing up for the poorest in our society.

In the past when senior party apparatchiks were getting too big for their boots or a cabinet minister was pursuing an obvious policy disaster, the leader would have had sufficient political nous to put his foot down before things got out of control. The failure to demonstrate this essence of leadership and exert control over his officials and the chancellor has left Starmer in the worst of all........

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