𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

They say that after a war, only the cockroaches and the politicians survive.

On the evidence of this week, Sir Keir Starmer intends to prove it.

His Defence Secretary has gone, his armed forces minister has gone and the plans for our national defence lie in shreds.

Yet there amid the wreckage, sits the Prime Minister – defiantly announcing that he is not going anywhere.

“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” is a phrase many school children will rightly learn at a young age.

At my school it was a firm favourite of our music teacher. Watch the news today and it would seem Sir Keir Starmer could do with a lesson or two.

Pride can mistake itself for principle when exhibited by a politician. Sir Keir has displayed that in ample portions.

Having been shown the heels of his Defence Secretary, and then his armed forces minister, he boldly announced he would not be going anywhere.

That was not vanity, he assured the state broadcaster in the only interview our leader has deigned to give since his defence plans were torn to shreds.

It wasn’t stubbornness, no no – it was “service and duty”.

If nothing else the big cheese shows an incredible gift for self-preservation.

When your own team keeps telling you your problem, and that now you are making the country less able to defend itself, the conclusion from No10 appears to be that the honourable course is to stay precisely where one is.

John Healey did not resign over a trifling dispute with his pals.

He directly accused Sir Keir of failing to “defend the country”, which is about as grave a charge as one minister can lay against a Prime Minister.

Al Carns, a decorated Royal Marine, followed him out the door. And what was Downing Street’s response since that moment?

To brief that cutting benefits would not, after all, be necessary to fund the military.

Benefits before bullets, as Reform put it – aping the ‘Welfare not Warfare’ line of Kemi Badenoch.

Yet the instinct, even now, is to shield the welfare budget before the defence of the realm.

For the only defence Sir Keir appears ready to invest in is his own.

He says he will fight any challenger – Mr Burnham, Mr Streeting, perhaps even Mr Carns – out of obligation to the country.

But the country did not ask him to cling on. It asked him to govern, and on the evidence presented to it over the course of many months, is that he cannot.

A Prime Minister who cannot keep a Defence Secretary, cannot command his own front bench, and cannot fill the holes opening daily in his government does not command the House in any meaningful sense.

Sir Keir merely occupies the building.

Her may tell himself whatever he likes about duty and service but he rest of us can see plain stubbornness, and a country paying the price for it.

When the dust settles, the cockroaches will at least have the decency to scuttle off.

The honourable thing would be for Sir Keir to do the same.