Chris Mason: PM confronts his most difficult day as party revolts

Chris Mason: PM confronts his most difficult day as party revoltsJust nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleChris MasonPolitical editorReutersSir Keir at a Cabinet meeting earlier this yearThis morning, Sir Keir Starmer's cabinet is split on the most fundamental political question a government's top table of ministers can ever wrestle with: whether the prime minister should carry on.Clearly, a cabinet split on this is unsustainable. Either cabinet ministers have to resign or be sacked, or the prime minister himself has to go.Last night, ministers went in to see Sir Keir and he was met with a range of advice. Some said he should fight on. Some said he should set out a timetable for his departure. And others, as he weighed his options, tried to help him kick around how he might deal with the scenario he now confronts.A dam now appears to have broken, with Labour MPs posting their public loss of confidence in the prime minister with such frequency it can be hard at times to keep count of them.In the hours after the prime minister's crunch speech on Monday, the verdicts, public and private, began to flow.Cabinet split as Mahmood calls on Starmer to set out timetable to goAnalysis: Has Starmer done enough to save his premiership?"Just so devastatingly crap" was the pithy and rather brutal view of one Labour MP in touch with me. It was a prescient review given the torrent of public criticism from his own colleagues that was about to be begin.Many of those MPs cannot shake a sense Sir Keir is repellent to too many voters just as Labour wrestles with how to take on Reform UK.But there are plenty of other Labour MPs who look on in horror at the implosion they are witnessing and will be called upon to publicly defend, when they would much rather it didn't happen at all."A lot of us are watching this slightly aghast. With a war; an economy struggling due to Iran; market gilt movements etc. I'm still of the view that stability is a premiu...