Anyone would have thought a brand-new government, keen to deliver on its manifesto promises, would have the House of Commons packed with Labour MPs working at full pelt to pass new legislation.
Not this lot. Instead, it has been reduced to a ghost town with sitting times finishing early and many days without a vote.
Some might think it’s because Starmer’s government has already run out of steam and ideas. But I think there is a more likely reason.
Morale among Labour MPs is at rock bottom. They are the ones getting it in the neck from their constituents about the series of disasters over which the government has presided.
As a result Labour MPs are already talking openly about a need for change at the top – and that both Starmer and Reeves in particular need to go.
Who’d have thought Labour’s general election promise of “Change” would have become about their leaders after just a few short months? And who knows? That might just be the only popular change they manage to deliver.
In fighting for his own political survival, Starmer is therefore keeping parliamentary time to a minimum so he can keep his unhappy and restless MPs occupied back in their constituencies, instead of being in Parliament plotting his downfall.
People shouldn’t underestimate how ruthless Starmer is.
But perhaps he needn’t worry too much. Removing a Labour leader is difficult – much harder than removing a Conservative one, as history has proved time and again.
With the , it only requires a number of letters of no confidence to go to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee and the game is pretty much up.
But no such mechanism exists to remove a Labour leader, no matter how useless they are. Remember Jeremy Corbyn? Fully 172 Labour MPs passed a vote of no confidence in him against just 40 for yet he still survived – so the odds are that Starmer is staying around for as long as he wants.
But for all the pain Labour MPs have gone through over the last six months and the grief they are getting from constituents about the Budget, the withdrawal of the , the attack on businesses and farmers, there will be a growing clamour for a bloodletting – and Starmer may find it hard to resist.
The person he is most likely to sacrifice to save his own skin is Reeves. What should worry Reeves the most is that names are already circulating of her potential replacement.
Pat McFadden, seen as a safe pair of hands, is the name often mentioned, but Douglas Alexander, a “serious politician” from the Blair and Brown era and only recently back in Parliament, is also a name gaining traction as the next chancellor.
With the calls for Reeves to go getting louder on the Labour benches, and people already jockeying for position to replace her, she may be gone sooner rather than later.
My advice to Starmer would be to be careful. History tells us that whenever a prime minister loses a chancellor, they often follow them through the door pretty quickly.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves (Image: PA)