You can’t kill something that is already dead. New details about Peter Mandelson’s disastrous appointment as Britain’s ambassador to Washington can trigger more paroxysms of outrage in Westminster. They can sharpen the pitch of opposition calls for the prime minister to resign. They can reinforce the view among Labour MPs that Keir Starmer shouldn’t lead them into a general election. But they can’t produce consensus around a replacement, or invent a way to choose one without self-destructive factional feuding.

Labour MPs’ craving for better leadership has been finely balanced with fear of holding a contest and emerging with someone worse. There is no final straw yet to come because the camel’s back was broken months ago.

Depressed inertia can keep Starmer in post at least until the results of next month’s local and devolved elections. Maybe even longer. Those ballots look sure to confirm what opinion polls have been saying for months about public disappointment with Labour and contempt for its leader.

It is hard to know how much influence the Mandelson saga has already had on general malaise, and how much attention is being paid to its latest convolutions. High living costs weigh on voters’ minds more than diplomatic appointments. When Labour gets hammered it will reflect cumulative disillusionment, not anger that high-level security clearance was granted to a man deemed unworthy of that status by the agency responsible for vetting him.

This isn’t to deny the significance of that decision, or what is revealed by Starmer’s effort to avoid responsibility for it. His defence is ignorance reinforced with righteous fury at the concealment of important facts from Downing Street. No one told the prime minister, or any other minister, that Mandelson’s........

© The Guardian