Who seriously thinks the government's issues would be solved by a change of PM?

What a paradox. Angela Rayner had long been poised to seize Keir Starmer's crown, and yet the

- JOHN RENTOUL

moment she left the government, the speculation about his future intensified.

She was too canny a politician to show overt disloyalty, and had even taken in recent months to saying that she didn't want to be prime minister, but she was always the one that Starmer feared. All prime ministers worry about their job security more than outsiders think is justified. They imagine that they are going to be toppled at any moment, even when there are no outward signs of a threat to their position.

Suddenly, those inner fears are writ large in public, and Labour MPs are talking about when Starmer will go. The speculation is both vacuous froth and deeply damaging at the same time.

Who is the Labour MP who has said that Starmer “doesn’t seem up to the job” and that the party cannot carry on with him? It is Clive Lewis, a member of the 19-strong Socialist Campaign Group, which is always opposed to the leader, except when it was one of their own, Jeremy Corbyn.

And who is the Labour MP who is being touted in The Guardian as Starmer's replacement? It is Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who is not an MP. For him to become an MP and therefore eligible to take over would require him to win a by-election, and I am not sure that there is any seat in the country in which a Labour candidate would be safe from Nigel Farage's party.

The closest Burnham is likely to get to No 10, it seems to me, would be getting Lucy Powell, his ally, elected as deputy leader of the party, which would give her a platform but no power.