'The Labour Party has literally gone insane.' These words – from a senior backbencher – accurately described the day Britain’s governing party stared into the abyss, took a deep breath, then hurled itself straight in.

I had the privilege of a front-row seat to the fall of Tony Blair. I chronicled the Brexit wars; Boris Johnson being deposed by a slice of birthday cake; and Liz Truss’s own quick-fire descent into oblivion.

But nothing compares to the complete madness of the last 24 hours, and the way Keir Starmer contrived to defy his party – and reality – and send them hurtling towards political and electoral destruction.

The mayhem began, ironically enough, with the Prime Minister finally accepting his fate. According to one of Starmer’s allies, as Monday’s trickle of MPs calling for his resignation turned into a flood, he finally acknowledged that his position had become untenable.

As his longest day stretched into the evening, he began to reach out to senior members of his Cabinet to discuss with them how he could end the crisis devouring his premiership.

‘He wasn’t explicitly saying to them “I’m resigning tomorrow”,’ one senior aide revealed. ‘But he was asking them what they thought he should do, how he could move things forward for the good of the party and what he could do to end the crisis in a dignified way.’

And then it all fell apart.

One of the Cabinet ministers Starmer contacted was Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. She spoke to him and, according to allies, advised him to set out a clear timetable for his departure. But, crucially, her conversation was then briefed to a national broadsheet newspaper.

‘Cabinet turn on Prime Minister,’ screamed the headline. ‘Prime Minister told to set out timeline for his departure’.

As soon as he saw the reports, the Prime Minister ‘went nuclear’, a supportive minister revealed. ‘In his eyes, he was trying to find a proper way out of it all. He felt he’d been stabbed in the back by his own Cabinet. And at that moment, he thought: “Right, f*** you. If that’s the way you want to play it, you’re going to have to drag me out.” ’

According to a source close to one of the main leadership teams, this destroyed the carefully choreographed strategy that had been crafted to usher Starmer towards the Downing Street exit. First, MPs were supposed to step down in sufficient numbers to bring the number of resignations close to the psychologically significant threshold of 80 names.

This was then to be followed by PPSs – the most junior ministers – and, if necessary, a raft of more senior frontbenchers. Starmer was then meant to be given breathing space, in which to consider his future, and if he still dug in, an approach from Cabinet was supposed to follow.

But according to one minister, ‘Shabana’s intervention wrecked everything. She couldn’t help boasting about how she was the one who had pushed him over the edge.’

A senior MP was even more brutal: ‘Shabana Mahmood’s briefing last night denied the Prime Minister the opportunity to leave with dignity. As a result, the whole thing is going to descend into a bloody mess from which this Government may never recover, no matter who takes over.’

The practical result was that when ministers arrived in Downing Street for yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, they found themselves walking into the most bizarre gathering in modern British political history.

On social media, the number of their colleagues calling for the Prime Minister’s resignation was approaching 100. Starmer’s close ally, Chief Secretary Darren Jones, had done a tour of the media studios in which he had suggested that Starmer was set to resign.

As one minister said: ‘When I walked in, I didn’t know what he was going to do. Whether he was going to set out a passionate defence of his record or tell us all he’d decided to quit.’

He did neither. Instead, he issued a brief, terse statement in which he stated simply: ‘The Labour Party has a process for challenging a leader and that has not been triggered. The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet.’

If ministers wanted to discuss the issue they could approach him in person, he said. He then proceeded to deliver a lecture on the Strait of Hormuz, heating oil and carbon dioxide supplies. At which point, the Government’s descent into insanity began in earnest.

As the meeting concluded, several ministers – including Health Secretary Wes Streeting – approached the Prime Minister to discuss the unfolding crisis. According to multiple sources, Starmer rebuffed them and escaped to the sanctuary of his private study.

Simultaneously, a small coterie of ultra-loyal ministers – christened ‘the Bitter-Enders’ by one MP – rushed out to tell the waiting media pack it would be business as usual, the Prime Minister would be focusing on the King’s Speech today and would be going nowhere. As they did so, the bulk of the Cabinet scurried away, keeping their counsel.

Then the briefing war exploded. Jess Phillips, the beloved Home Office Minister, announced she was stepping down, eviscerating Starmer in the process. She took her resignation as an opportunity to get the PM to crack down on online child abuse, writing: ‘We could stop this abuse. It has taken me a year to get you to agree to even threaten to legislate in this space. Not legislate, just threaten. This is the definition of incremental change. Nothing bold about it.’

A Cabinet minister – noting Phillips’ proximity to Shabana Mahmood and citing the Home Secretary’s antics the previous evening – messaged me to tell me Mahmood should be dumped. ‘Either she resigns or Keir should sack her,’ he raged.

A few minutes later, a senior backbencher phoned. ‘We’re f***ed. We’re all completely f***ed. Where are the f***ing Cabinet? What are they f***ing waiting for?’

At precisely that moment, with Starmer fighting for his political life and desperate for his colleagues to rally to his side, Chancellor Rachel Reeves helpfully issued her only tweet of the day. ‘It was a pleasure to welcome Helen and Stephen from Truman Books in my constituency to Downing Street’, she said.

Meanwhile, the two main leadership candidates had gone to ground. But their teams continued to lob shells at each other. ‘Wes moved too early,’ one Burnham supporter told me. ‘He’s blown it. And now he’s bottled it.’

A Streeting ally responded: ‘It’s all gone wrong for Andy. People have moved. He’s not in the House, so he’s not in the debate. This will all be resolved before he’s anywhere close to getting a seat.’

The narrative developing this morning is that the Government is in limbo. It isn’t. It’s completely catatonic.

Labour MPs, from the Prime Minister down, are in the midst of a collective nervous breakdown. Brutalised by the electorate last Thursday, torn asunder by ideology and personal ambition, they have entered a state of paralysis and denial.

Soon after the Prime Minister’s declaration that he would fight on, I bumped into a Starmer loyalist. A good man, who has represented a solid working-class constituency for years, he gave me his readout of the political situation in his area.

‘Yes, we had some bad results’, he said. ‘But we had one problem.’ He leaned forward and looked around conspiratorially. ‘No 10 had a strategy for the last week of the campaign. He was going to toughen up his language and take on Trump. But in the end, he decided he couldn’t do it because the King was out there.’

Yesterday, a stream of Starmer’s supporters traipsed through the broadcast studios, saying: ‘We need to listen to what people are saying to us.’

There is no ambiguity about what the country is saying. Last week, millions of hard-working Britons finished their dinner, traipsed down to their local voting centre, and sent the Government a message. That message was firm, concise and clear. ‘We’ve had enough of Keir Starmer,’ they said, ‘and we want you to get rid of him’.

And what has been the Government’s response? To tell them: ‘You lot don’t know what you’re talking about. Keir Starmer is a great man. Leave the business of running the country to us.’

Over the past week, Starmer’s dwindling band of supporters have been presenting a consistent rationale for not removing him. The world is in the grip of two major wars. The global economy is teetering on the brink of implosion. This is a time for stability and maturity at the heart of Government.

They are 100 per cent right. But the reality this morning tells a very different story.

But what is the reality this morning? The Prime Minister is refusing to speak to his Health Secretary – although some sort of showdown is due to take place this morning.

The Home Secretary has told the Prime Minister she has lost confidence in him and that he should step down – but she said it privately and hasn’t uttered a word in public.

Half a dozen Cabinet ministers are actively considering resignation. The bulk of the rest cannot bring themselves to publicly express support for their leader.

One hundred MPs, ministers and junior ministers have openly stated that the Prime Minister should step down. This, in turn, means his parliamentary majority is now in the hands of people who no longer believe he can deliver the Government’s agenda.

At last, three separate plots to unseat Keir Starmer are under way. The proposed ministerial reshuffle has had to be shelved because of his weakness. And all of this in full view of Britain’s global allies and enemies.

The idea that this situation is sustainable is lunacy. The previous Tory administration pushed the boundaries of dysfunctional national governance to the limits. But to the Conservative Party’s credit, its ministers and MPs finally reached a point where they recognised loyalty to their country had to trump loyalty to their party.

Similarly, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss fought like tigers to retain their grip on the keys to Downing Street. But eventually political reality – and a desire to retain a shred of self-respect – prevailed.

Keir Starmer and his party currently have neither the humility nor the dignity to place the national interest ahead of their own.

The reality is the Prime Minister does not give a damn about fighting for the working people of Britain. If he did, he would recognise that his own weakness is now leaving them defenceless at a time of unique international and economic peril.

Nor does he retain any meaningful connection with, or empathy for, his self-professed working-class roots. If he did, he would know that his name across these communities is universally prefaced with an expletive. And he would have already stood aside for someone who genuinely understands Red Wall Britain’s needs, dreams and fears.

Just as I was packing up for the day, a loyalist minister messaged me. ‘Think this has been a good day for us,’ he said.

Labour is in the grip of The Madness. It appears it will take another brutal reckoning at the hands of the British people to bring them back to reality.