This is a fascinating piece by Ailbhe Rea, The New Statesman's new political editor, about the current turmoil in the Labour Party and Downing Street itself on the leadership of the Prime Minister.
There are some astonishing comments in the piece. Rea writes "Some MPs have completely stopped telling their whips how they really feel, putting on a front of loyalty. Instead they tell the New Statesman."
Elsewhere she writes of the turnover in No. 10 "If this new Downing Street machine was intended to give ministers a clearer direction from the centre, elsewhere in government, the reorganisation appears to have had the opposite effect. "You don't know who to talk to any more. If anything, the steer is less clear than it used to be," a government source says, "We're getting no clear political direction and the whole operation appears to be in stasis.""
One former Downing Street departee says of the current set up "There is a bunker mentality. You don't realise when you're in there how bad it is. None of them realise how unpopular we are."
Of course any government has disgruntled backbenchers and sacked ministers, there are always former staffers willing to complain to sympathetic journalists.
But the fact is that there are direct parallels with the latter of days of the last Conservative government. When you hit this level of internal turmoil things just don't start to get better, no matter how hard or what you try.
