Henry Zeffman

But it is a proxy for the many, many problems that Keir Starmer has had to grapple with.

And the fact that for many people in the Labour Party, they believe now that he's not up to the job.

And that's really why it's all so hot.

And the minister who's been on the doors a lot told me yesterday, it is impossible for us to make an argument when the news agenda is being so dominated by this story.

So it's not that voters are answering the door and going, oh, I'm terribly cross that Ian Collard isn't allowed to appear at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

But it makes it impossible to use that minister's phrase directly.

It makes it impossible for us to make an argument.

And that's the problem.

And I think also we talked about this last week, didn't we?

As someone else in the party said to me last weekend when we were reporting on all this, because it's going on and on and on and on and on, when it comes to the results in May, people know what to expect, but they haven't yet felt it.

Yes, the emotional feeling of... And when MPs see their councillors, friends, fellow activists, people who they've stuffed envelopes with, knocked on doors in the rain, if they see councillors across England lose their seats, possibly in their thousands, some of the projections suggest...

If they see Labour being third again in Scotland, where they were so successful in the general election under Anas Sarwar, if they see them losing in Wales for the first time in a century, in a hundred years, none of those outcomes would be surprising.

But I think don't underestimate what that sentiment might provoke people to do, which is why I completely agree with you, Chris.

No one knows when or how it will happen, but we're back in that place where it feels like, uh-oh.

Or not.

And it is possible it won't, right?

And they're in this sort of awful... Absolutely it is.

They're all miserable and there's no clear way out of it.

I do, yes.

We've got Darren Jones on tomorrow who is the lucky minister who will have to face questions about Ian Collard and all sorts of other things.