A grim week for Starmer – but things could be about to get worse

A grim week for Starmer – but things could be about to get worse7 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleChris MasonPolitical editorPA MediaThis was the week questions about the future of the prime minister took a turn for the worse for Sir Keir Starmer.If you had asked me a fortnight ago about the sentiment we were picking up from Labour MPs about Sir Keir's future in Downing Street, I would have told you that pressure from them appeared to have eased.Perhaps, some pondered, after the prime minister's political near death experience in February - the moment the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the party "looked over the precipice" - the appetite to take another peek over the edge had gone, at least for now.Labour MPs were still looking towards the elections around Britain a week on Thursday with trepidation bordering on horror, but many talked with pride about how their leader was handling the war in the Middle East and the fervent leadership chatter had eased, at least a bit.But all of this was before mid-afternoon on Thursday of last week, when the Guardian's investigation about Lord Mandelson's security vetting dropped.Since then, an unremittingly, relentlessly, incessantly grim story, if you think of it from the perspective of the Labour Party, has been squatting on the news agenda, expelling the potential for anything they would rather be talking about getting any attention.And yes, just days before those crucial elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and to many English local authorities.Key evidence from sacked official at heart of Mandelson vetting rowWhy Starmer still can't move on from the Mandelson messSo you won't be remotely surprised when I tell you that it has left Labour folk from the cabinet down gloomy, run down and irritated.We have seen an element of that play out publicly.Ministers deployed on what is known as the morning round, where they trundle from one studio to the next, often in pos...