Upsetting backbench MPs is an occupational hazard for prime ministers. Government is an endless sequence of messy compromises. Incumbency is a drag on popularity. Poll ratings sink and nerves fray. Careers are thwarted. There are fewer ministerial jobs than ambitious candidates.

This is normal party discontentment. It grows over the course of a parliament, becoming critical at the point when rebel numbers threaten the leader’s majority. By that metric, Keir Starmer can afford to provoke a lot of dissatisfaction in the ranks. And, together with Rachel Reeves, he has.

The Labour mood in the aftermath of last week’s spring statement is bleak. Shrinking benefits in the name of fiscal rectitude was never going to go down well with MPs who spent years in opposition denouncing the Tories for that sort of thing. But the demoralising effect is greater for being cumulative. It is just over a month since Starmer raided the overseas aid budget to fund higher defence spending. Weeks earlier, Reeves landed Heathrow airport expansion on a party that would rather be striving for net zero.

Each time, Labour MPs are presented with a plausible force majeure justification – economic growth is the precondition for revenue to fund good causes; Vladimir Putin makes rearmament urgent; a welfare system marked by perverse incentives that steer people away from work needs reform. In isolation, any single unpalatable choice would be easier to swallow. As a multi-course meal, it turns the stomachs of MPs who feel they weren’t consulted on........

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