The PM’s allies on the right are ideologically opposed to any economic agenda that could see off the threat from Reform

Keir Starmer’s team can smell the presence of the political grim reaper. Every Friday, the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, runs a 30-minute call for Labour staffers called “forward look”. Among other things, the session runs through the big events of the previous week, as well as what is likely to come up in the days ahead. For a long time, the call extensively featured the latest polling: for example, what voters thought about Labour’s policies, as well as the popularity of the party’s leading lights. But as the figures went from dire to catastrophic, the polling was quietly dropped from the call.

What hasn’t gone awol from the agenda are council byelection results. Since the July general election, Labour has lost 22 seats. Attentive staffers on the call note that the picture is bleaker than the headline figures suggest, because even where Labour has retained seats, the party’s share of the vote is invariably plummeting by a fifth. Nigel Farage’s Reform party is surging, with the Greens posing a growing threat on Labour’s left flank.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist