Starmer must escape the ‘chaos and confusion’ that brought down the Tories

Just under a fortnight ago, a tanned and unusually ebullient Sir Keir Starmer gathered together his staff in No 10 to launch “phase two” of his government.

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He gave them a pep talk. It was released as a video, and it hasn't aged well.

“We’re going to phase two in good spirits - confident, and with conviction about what we’re doing. It needs a more powerful No 10, so we’ve added to the team some really important new members, and made a number of other changes. But this is about focus on delivery,” the PM declared, purposefully.

As they say on social media: “How’s that going, Keir?”

Rather than the “focus on delivery” - about which the prime minister was right - the focus has been on Angela Rayner’s tax affairs, her resignation as deputy prime minister, Peter Mandelson’s apparently overly devoted loyalty to Jeffrey Epstein, his resignation as ambassador in Washington and, ironically enough, the seemingly dysfunctional ways of the newly beefed-up No 10 machine.

Rightly, given his role at the centre of affairs, focus has now centred on the role and influence of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. We may never know the full truth about who was responsible for the ill-fated decision to make Lord Mandelson ambassador to America, but there's no doubt that Mr McSweeney wasn't aloof from the process.