It feels as though the media have jumped the shark this morning, although Labour MPs have given them the surfboard.

We are now in the extraordinary position where a single backbench MP, with limited reach and no serious prospect of becoming Prime Minister, has decided that if the Prime Minister’s speech does not personally reassure her, she will trigger a leadership challenge.

This is not strategy. It’s amateur dramatics. MPs and former MPs in the Lords are not judges on strictly come dancing

Of course Labour MPs are entitled to be angry. The results were grim and the warning signs are real. But a governing party cannot conduct itself as though every poor weekend of coverage requires a fresh regicide timetable.

The public will not thank Labour for turning anxiety about Reform into another internal psychodrama. They want a government that looks serious enough to govern, not one that appears to be workshopping its next nervous breakdown on live television or worse, The Guardian.