Chancellor under fire Starmer now has little choice but to stay closer to Reeves

When Keir Starmer was mounting the case for the prosecution against Boris Johnson for his Partygate antics, it took almost two months and a police investigation for him to formally call for the prime minister to resign.

- Jessica Elgot

He was of the view there was no point calling for things until they were likely to happen.

This is not the philosophy of the current leader of the opposition.

Since October, Kemi Badenoch has called on Starmer to sack his chancellor three times, once over a mishap with her rental licence, then for considering raising income tax, and finally because she did not in fact raise income tax.

It is unclear whether Badenoch genuinely believes Reeves may be forced out because of how she spun the forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to help her step back from the brink of a manifesto breach. Resignations have been coming thick and fast, from Angela Rayner to Peter Mandelson, and now the departure of Richard Hughes from the OBR over an embarrassing shoddiness in their cybersecurity, which meant the whole budget was leaked early.

But the reality is that prime ministers almost never sack their chancellors - and when they do, it almost inevitably leads to their own downfall. The most recent chancellor to have that experience, Kwasi Kwarteng, told Liz Truss that if she sacked him, her own premiership was over.