And it’s exacerbated the level of doom in Labour’s ranks about the prospects for Keir Starmer, stuck in limbo, as one MP told me, “we’re just beside ourselves that we can’t get anything done or sorted because of it all – everything is being held up by people wondering if they’re going to have to run a leadership contest”.
You can hear that frustration in ministers’ voices – on Tuesday, the government had voted to get rid of the limit on bigger families getting some benefits – it took months to persuade No 10 to make that expensive move which cheered the backbenches. The following day any sign of that feeling of accomplishment vanished.
The risk for the country, which elected Labour less than two years ago with an enormous majority, is that the PM’s predicament means the governing party is distracted.
Unable to go back and start again, unable to go forward boldly, because the position of its leader is in such peril. “The government just can’t govern with direction – that’s a massive issue, and something is going to have to give,” one senior official told me.
Politics in the 2020s change fast, and it is daft to try to predict what could happen next. It is, of course, still possible that something will turn up. That the prime minister can turn things around, as one of his exasperated cabinet allies said, “people just really want us to fix it”.
But the Mandelson mess makes mending what’s been done that much harder.
Back in January, Starmer vowed to be in the chair in 2027. He also said he’d be judged at the General Election in 2029. But as the shock waves from this latest scandal hit, the truth is that so many people in his party have reached a judgement already – that he may not be the man to get them that far.