Starmer reprieved - for now

Labour leader sees off attempted coup

In the end, there was to be no coup, no rebellion, no putsch, no revolt.

Labour had - we were told by an endless stream of commentators, observers and pundits - that Starmer’s days were numbered. Even his hours were ebbing away.

The party’s dissenting voices had risen to fever pitch but no-one seemed to have thought of what would happen after Starmer had been booted out.

Captain Mainwaring and Lance Corporal Jones could not have been more inept and the pollsters and predictors suddenly disappeared from the airwaves to mull over what they had done. Which was not terribly much and as quick as the political tide threatened to overcome the Labour machine, it receded just as quickly.

Correspondents specialising in spreading doom gradually moderated their tone to one which allowed them to say that a putsch might still be on the cards - only not that particular day.

Starmer survived not because his MPs suddenly had realised how good he was but because the PM was in mortal danger and when you looked at the alternatives, they were largely second rate; if not even worse.

As Ed Miliband, who has experience of this thing, put it: “They looked over the precipice and didn’t like what they saw.”

Of course they didn’t. Would you have done anything different?

So, what next? Well the party’s prospects are still rather unpredictable but there does not seem to be either an appetite for change or an appetite to go through more agonising hand-wringing.

Kent’s new batch of Labour MPs stayed quietly loyal, predictably so, but only because they knew just how volatile politics is and can veer off course in the least expected way.

And like buses, leadership contests tend to come in bunches so they may get another shot at it in the not too distant future.