May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, and now Starmer: each one was brought low for a reason. But what if the deeper problem is the office itself?

They were times in which prime ministers seemed to be on their way out as soon as they’d arrived. The big strategic decisions the country faced were ducked or postponed. The public finances repeatedly wobbled, yet efforts to rationalise the tax system faltered in the face of vested interests, including farmers. Reforms to social security were trumpeted before being diluted. The whole business of politics was animated by rancour and rivalry, rather than practical action. All the while, populists waited in the wings.

This is not a sneak peak into a future history book about today’s Britain, but a description of the French fourth republic, which staggered after a difficult birth in 1946 until 1958, when the exhausted regime ceded the authority to create a new order to Gen Charles de Gaulle, effectively putting itself out of its misery.

Distracted, listless and unambitious – the PM’s true form has finally emerged. But whatever comes next must end this ruinous cycle

Finally, belatedly, an honest portrait of Keir Starmer has been allowed to form. It’s been a hell of a journey. At first he was sanctified as the Labour saviour, finally arrived. That gave way to pleas that he was essentially a good sort, new to politics and in need of time. Now an impression is emerging that he is, in fact, quite a bad egg. To quote a brutal recent summation from a Labour insider speaking to Politico: “Lots of people think Keir Starmer is a good man who is out of his depth. Wrong. He’s an asshole who’s out of his depth.”

The charges are now coming thick and fast. He cannot manage teams. He throws people under the bus to save his own skin. He cannot do the job. The whole Peter Mandelson affair, the latest instalment of which is the revelation that Mandelson failed his security vetting, and that Starmer claims not to have been told of this, has at least come with one silver lining. As his own ministers distance themselves from him and give up the ghost on live television, even loyal stalwarts can’t sustain their tedious, misguided speculation that he might be rebooted and come good. The broad conclusion is that Starmer is now beyond rehabilitation, and his fate only a matter of time. So what now?

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Podcaster claimed former prime minister not English because he is ‘brown-skinned Hindu’

Rishi Sunak has described himself as being “British, English and British Asian” in a riposte to increasing racially charged language used by figures on the right.

The UK’s first British Asian prime minister was speaking after his identity was questioned in recent debate sparked by a claim by the podcaster Konstantin Kisin that Sunak was not English because he was a “brown-skinned Hindu”.

Former Tory’s media strategy reportedly calls him ‘biggest defection story Reform has ever had’

Robert Jenrick was described as “the new sheriff in town” and the politician needed by Reform UK to give it experience and political “heft”, according to a leaked media plan for his defection prepared by his aides.

The emergence of the document, which also describes Jenrick as “the most dynamic politician in the Conservative party”, came as Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, hailed the defection, after days of silence from one of Nigel Farage’s key aides.