To me, I have never been more convinced that he is personally unable to lead a successful Labour Party campaign at the next general election.

The serious Prime Minister does not, for example, as we learnt from the Olli Robbins hearing,

it either personally or through his private office put up a person like Matthew Doyle to be a ambassador.

All of this is by the by. The only thing that really matters is,

is he as a person able to lead this country

for the next three years productively hello and happy Thursday everybody happy

Thursday one and all it's been a tumultuous week in politics in Westminster and so much to unpack. Where do we start?

Well, I think just first of all a sort of note to listeners, which is that we're recording this

as Cat Little, the permanent secretary at the cabinet office, is being cross-examined by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

Now, without getting into that too early in the conversation,

just to say that we don't know what she will say,

and that may move the story on.

But that in itself is kind of a measure of how real time this story has suddenly become again.

The whole Mandelson appointment, vetting and so on.

It's hour by hour, isn't it?

It really is.

And it goes from apparent clarity to confusion and ambiguity.

And there's only one thing that I think I think personally we can say with

absolute confidence is that Keir-Stama looks weaker and a man with less grip on government

than we even suspected he had and feels he feels isolated now in many ways and it and if

there were question marks around you know his longevity as a prime minister and his crucially his

ability to take us into a next election that seems to me to be beyond all of the flotsam and jetsam of this particular crisis,

...