Jonathan Freedland

But instead, there was a kind of headless chicken quality to this of, oh, my God, we're going to have to go crazy to get on the right side of this guy.

And this is the effect.

He makes people kind of lose their judgment and lose their minds.

I mean, I remember when Theresa May, wasn't she the first leader, world leader, to go to Washington to see Donald Trump days after he was elected and immediately invited him for a state visit, you know, in this kind of panic.

And you saw Starmer doing the same, pulling out the envelope, the king wants me to invite you again.

He wrong-foots people, Donald Trump.

He gets people off their game and panicked and alarmed.

And I think the whole Mandelson story

in a way, is an example of how much the Trump presidency has sort of wobbled and shaken the Starmer premiership and may in the end be responsible for the decision which ultimately costs this prime minister his job.

Well, you know, there were some uncomfortable comparisons made today for Keir Starmer with Boris Johnson, where people were quoting back to Keir Starmer what he, Starmer, had himself said to Boris Johnson after the Partygate affair.

You know, if you mislead the Commons, that's terminal.

You can't blame officials for your own misjudgments and so on.

They're throwing back those lines.

But let's remember what drove out Boris Johnson.

In the end, it wasn't technically the Partygate affair.

It was some other...

row about a memorably named minister called Pinscher who had been making unwanted advances to somebody and Boris Johnson's account of it didn't appear to fully stack up.

But the reason why that episode was terminal for Johnson was because of everything that had gone before.

My sense is it may well not be this.

It may well be something down the road, but the reason why that will be a tipping point will be because