“Over to you Keir,” says a senior minister, not mincing his words.
Not everyone in the Labour Party wants there to be a challenge to the leadership, but even Sir Keir Starmer’s most loyal ministers are pushing him to change – and fast.
The prime minister is nothing if not a determined man. But can he show he can turn it round?
Millions of voters have told him they aren’t impressed with what he’s been doing in 22 months of government – and, as each hour passes, more of his colleagues are going public to say, neither are they.
The powerful unions, who still pay the party’s bills, have put the prime minister on notice, too. One of their leaders told me: “It’s been a slow motion car crash – we need a concrete promise that things will change.”
Labour has been battered at these elections – and it being expected makes it no less painful.
At count after count, seat after seat, the party lost to Nigel Farage, a man many in Labour deride as a vaudeville performer who harbours offensive views.
In other parts of the country, Labour gave ground to another leader, Zack Polanski, who used to be an actual performer, a hypnotist, and a Lib Dem.
The success of Reform UK under Farage is extraordinary, and the progress of the Greens under Polanski is impressive too.
But for some in Labour the grating thing about their dismal position now is it’s different to losing to the Conservatives – that feeling is familiar, it’s in their DNA.
