Labour has spent much of the past year paralysed by competing fears. MPs’ dread of facing voters with Keir Starmer as prime minister has been kept in check by their recoil from the process of replacing him. They know the prime minister is an electoral liability; they know that the electorate takes a dim view of chaotic, regicidal parties that showcase disunity and factional rancour when they are supposed to be running the country.

Impatience with Starmer’s leadership has, until now, been neutralised by reluctance to gamble on a contest that might replace him with someone worse. Last week’s local and devolved ballots changed the calculus. Labour MPs now have indisputable evidence that they are cruising towards nationwide electoral oblivion. A growing number think the trajectory will not change if the leader stays the same.

The results were catastrophic by any measure, but that wasn’t the only factor provoking backbench demands for Starmer’s departure, or the flurry of frontbench resignations. The prime minister’s response exemplified traits that colleagues find infuriating about his leadership. He took responsibility for Labour’s electoral evisceration in terms that were more defiant than humble.

In an interview over the weekend, Starmer said he intended to serve a decade in Downing Street. In a speech on Monday, Starmer characterised voters’ damning verdict on the two years of Labour government as the steep part of a normal learning curve for new prime ministers. The remedy for public frustration was not a different direction but the current one pursued with greater urgency. He said that “incremental change won’t cut it”, while proving with caveat-laden half-pledges that increments are the only currency he holds.

The deficiency was starkest on the subject of Brexit. The prime minister was scathing of its consequences. He denounced Nigel Farage’s evasion of accountability for a litany of broken Eurosceptic promises. He pledged a return to “the heart of Europe”. These are things he may have believed in opposition but failed to say in the election campaign that brought him to power. Now, in what was advertised as a moment of rhetorical unshackling, he still couldn’t commit to break free from the red lines – no single........

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