This is the beginning of the end for Starmer - the suit so generously purchased for him by Lord Alli has been branded with the yellow stripe of betrayal: DAN HODGES

It was only six votes. But when people come to write the history, Keir Starmer’s defeat in the Runcorn by-election will probably come to be viewed as the beginning of the end of his premiership.

That may seem a premature conclusion, given he has been in office less than a year. But the evidence is there for anyone who wishes to see it.

Not least because it was not actually six voters who decided his fate. The ballots are still being counted in the local and mayoral elections. Yet across the nation the pattern is clear. Labour’s vote is imploding on an unprecedented scale.

And these are not mid-term elections, the traditional dog days of an incumbent administration. It is only ten months since Sir Keir was returned with a landslide majority. And already the suit so generously purchased for him by Lord Alli has been branded with the yellow stripe of betrayal.

Only one prime minister in the last half a century has been so comprehensively humiliated in their first parliamentary test since securing a majority. That was the hapless John Major, in the aftermath of the Black Wednesday debacle in 1992 that sealed his own political demise.

Keir Starmer is now facing his Black Friday. There will not be any precipitous demands for his head. Members of the shadow cabinet will trot out and regurgitate the prepared lines about ‘listening’ and ‘learning’.

But this morning Labour MPs are waking to an uncomfortable reality. Which is that when Keir Starmer told a friend in the middle of the election that secured him the leadership of his party: ‘You know, I don’t get politics. I don’t understand it. And I don’t really like it,’ he was telling the truth.

Yes, we are still in the foothills of this parliament. Although the verdict of the people was damning, turnout was low as huge swathes of the country voted ‘none of the above’. Labour’s position is still recoverable. But what is worrying his backbenchers is they see precious little evidence that Sir Keir has the guile or will to initiate that recovery. With good reason.

Nigel Farage (pictured with new Reform MP Sarah Pochin) is now the true Leader of the Opposition, writes DAN HODGES

 Despite the hype, Starmer never actually had a strategy for winning the 2024 general election. Instead, he opted to sit back and let Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives lose it. And now he no longer has the Tories to kick around any more, he is politically adrift.

These elections were not just a verdict on Labour’s first month in office. They were also a referendum on Sir Keir’s attempt to blame his Government’s errors and missteps on its predecessors.

But having been told ad infinitum that a vote for Labour represented a vote for change, the British people simply don’t want to hear it. Having constructed the £20billion ‘black hole’, Starmer and Reeves now find themselves stuck at the bottom of it.

Even then, if the Tories remained Labour’s primary opponents, the Prime Minister might just have a chance of reshaping his party's fortunes. Especially given Kemi Badenoch’s replacement by Robert Jenrick is now just a matter of time.

But Nigel Farage is now the true Leader of the Opposition. And Keir Starmer does not have the faintest idea how to confront Farage’s insurgent populism.

His prevarication on trans rights. His liberal squeamishness on immigration. His myopic inability to grasp the fury generated by cuts to winter-fuel payments, pensions and disability benefits. If Reform’s leader could piece together an identikit Labour leader to run against, a former human-rights lawyer, Knight of the Realm resident of North London would represent the perfect fit.

And these results are by no means the nadir for Sir Keir and his party. The Rachel Reeves tax bombshell is about to detonate. Trump’s tariff vandalism is set to plunge the US, and then global, economy into recession. The menace of Putin and China will force the West to beat its ploughshares into swords and at an increasingly frantic and costly pace. And as the international turmoil spreads, more and more small boats will hove into view off Britain’s coastline.

All political careers ultimately end in failure. I suspect when Keir Starmer’s ends it will be with Runcorn carved into his heart.