Where are we then, after the most consequential week in British politics since the last one?

Keir Starmer no longer commands a majority in the House of Commons on key issues he cares about, the basic requirement which gives prime ministers their constitutional legitimacy. That much became clear on Thursday when Angela Rayner and other Labour MPs sided with the Tories to insist that the Intelligence and Security Committee should decide – not the cabinet secretary – which documents on the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States should be released.

So Labour has a working majority of 156 but Starmer no longer commands it. He is functionally finished as prime minister. Had two cabinet ministers gone public on Thursday evening to say that he should resign, it would surely have caused a cascade of departures. What finishes prime ministers is not votes of confidence but being unable to run a government and command the support of sufficient numbers of frontbenchers. Both Theresa May and Boris Johnson survived votes of no confidence among their MPs but were gone shortly afterwards. In Johnson’s case it took 52 resignations by ministers and parliamentary private secretaries to conclude that he was toast.

The Johnson–Starmer parallels are interesting, since they are very different people and loathed each other. But in trying to enforce a procedural nonsense on a party which could not stomach it, as Starmer did yesterday, he was merely repeating the errors of judgement which led Johnson to dragoon Tory MPs into supporting Owen Paterson, a senior Conservative who had been found bang to rights for paid lobbying. Johnson lasted another nine months but most of us who have written at length about his downfall concluded that this was when the hubris and the rot set in.

Starmer’s house is riddled with rot to its deepest foundations, but the Labour party has, for now, declined to kick it down. They have bottled it. Starmergeddon has been deferred. Part of the reason for this is that many MPs are only just catching up with the reality. The incandescent rage in the tea room and on the Commons terrace on Wednesday evening came because they were shocked to their boots by Starmer’s admission that he had known that some Mandelson links to Epstein continued after he was convicted, at the point that he gave him the job.

Anyone paying attention last September would have known this. Starmer was asked at a press conference in January 2024, by Jim Pickard of the Financial Times, what he thought of Mandelson staying in Epstein’s apartment when he was in jail. It is a feature of Westminster that journalists are often accused of obsessively following issues deep into the weeds, but many MPs barely follow the details of these things. They see and hear what they want to hear and move as a herd – as Nadhim Zahawi pointed out to Boris Johnson as the end neared.

And yet the herd has not moved. At the time of writing, very few mainstream Labour MPs have demanded Starmer’s resignation. Jack McConnell, the former first minister of Scotland, called time on the prime minister this morning, calling for a ‘total reset’ at the top and urging cabinet ministers to plunge the knife, but he is a rare exception.

There seems a near-overwhelming view that Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, should resign, but even implacable foes of Starmer are reluctant to say so on the record. It is a moot point whether sacrificing McSweeney now would be enough to save Starmer’s skin. Indeed, I suspect it would simply remove the prime minister’s human shield. Starmer has instead offered McSweeney his support, saying he is the man who got Labour elected. It is an accurate assessment, but one which shows that, in his heart, Starmer understands that he himself was not the one who deserves the credit.

There is also the factor of what losing........

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