Labour is in the deepest trouble. A juicy leadership drama ignites all Westminster-watchers, another spellbinding live-action theatre of rising and falling stars, duels, betrayals of trust, new alliances and old ones broken.

Some would pull back from this vortex. Is regicide absolutely necessary when “stability” is what people and markets say they want and vox pops groan, “Not another one!” After less than two years, with worse turmoil ahead from the Trump war, now, really?

Whatever comes of Wes Streeting’s attempt to trigger a contest, this sixth game of thrones for No 10 in a decade is inevitable and unavoidable. Labour has to confront what voters said deafeningly in the local elections: not Labour and, crushingly, not Keir Starmer. He is in that bourn from which no traveller returns: political death. No one ever came back from such public rejection. Ignoring it is not an option, just wishful thinking. As Mark Carney famously warned, “Hope is not a plan, nostalgia is not a strategy.” Labour needs a plan and a strategy, a chance to start again with candidates laying out their maps and their melodies.

Politics is a miserable business much of the time. Starmer doesn’t deserve this, but with a dignified timetable he must be gone by autumn. The threatening spectre of Nigel Farage means there is no room for sympathy, nor time to wait for change either in Starmer or in public opinion of him: it will never come. Though he has been an unsuccessful – and unlucky – leader, I like and respect the man, but the public doesn’t. Better by far if he doesn’t fight a contest, but when........

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