It’s all gone a little bit Pete Tong for Sir Keir and the gang in No. 10. No acts of seppuku have yet been committed – but it is surely only a matter of time before heads are offered up on chargers. Currently, it is Morgan McSweeney, the Downing Street chief of staff, who is primed to be in the firing line. The Labour backbenches are screaming for his blood, given both the chaotic state of No. 10 and McSweeney’s extensive links to Peter Mandelson. Most are couching their demands using couched terms about a ‘reset’…

In the last 48 hours, various MPs have taken to social and traditional media to express their views. Simon Opher, the Member for Stroud told the Today programme that:

Keir Starmer needs to change his advisers in Number 10. I think he’s being badly advised and he’s being really let down, particularly on this decision… We need a bit of a clear out in No.10… I think if my chief of staff had done this he would be looking for another job, to be honest. I do think we need a change… He’s been very poorly advised… Keir may have things to answer but I think mainly he’s been very poorly advised… We want a fresh new start and to get on with the day to day of actually improving the country. This is a question of getting Number 10 properly functioning.

Kim Johnson, the MP for Liverpool Riverside, meanwhile shared an article referring to claims that McSweeney’s former think tank Labour Together paid a PR firm to investigate journalists. ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant’, she wrote ‘and what’s been exposed shows McSweeney’s operation is rotten to the core. We’re told the adults are in the room. If this is their idea of leadership, No. 10 needs gutting from top to bottom.’

Karl Turner, the Hull MP meanwhile told Times Radio that ‘If McSweeney continues in No. 10 Downing Street, I think the PM is up against it in a way that he doesn’t need to be’. Brian Leishman, the Alloa and Grangemouth MP adds: ‘It’s time he was removed from power.’ For months, many in Labour have thought that the May local elections would be the end of the Starmer-McSweeney double act. Now, some are wondering if it will even last that long…