Be absolutely clear. Keir Starmer is in very deep trouble indeed. Perhaps belatedly, he himself grasps this. His team and his ministers knew it already. His party and the public get it too. For this deeply unpopular Labour prime minister, the words approval rating are a contradiction in terms.

The eruption of speculation about Starmer’s future this week may have taken people by surprise. Where did that suddenly come from? The short answer is that No 10 briefed the latest twist – that Starmer expects to face and defeat a leadership challenge – on Tuesday evening. The longer one is that the Starmer leadership issue has been steadily gaining traction and credibility among MPs since the summer. This story is not a Westminster confection. Politically, it is very real. Dismiss it at your peril.

No 10 was responding to the issue that is the talk of the parliamentary Labour party. The talk is, very simply, a reflection of what the public now thinks. The public’s judgment about Starmer is brutal: it does not want him. The Labour party has to decide whether it thinks the public is right or wrong. That’s a dangerous game to play, especially for a party that is now sometimes running fourth in the polls.

The Starmer question facing Labour is both straightforward and complicated at the same time. The straightforward version is that he is very unpopular and helping to drag Labour down. Get rid of him and perhaps things will improve. The more complicated one is that there is little agreement over how, when, and to whose benefit........

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