DAN HODGES: I’ll by no means activate my workers, Starmer as soon as stated. Try telling that to the trio he has simply thrown underneath a bus

What are the rules? Forget for a moment the ongoing – though pointless – debate about Keir Starmer’s future. He has none, as the upcoming Gorton by-election and local elections will attest.

Instead, let’s focus on something more fundamental that has emerged over a week that has seen the total implosion of Starmer’s authority and premiership. Or, rather, let us focus on something that’s been submerged. Namely the fundamentals of probity, rectitude and integrity that we have been told – principally by Sir Keir himself – represent the new guard-rails of our national governance.

When he was elected, in his first speech to the nation, Starmer pledged he would lead ‘a government of service’. Its primary mission, he stated, would be to ‘restore respect to politics’.

He was crucially aware, he claimed, that ‘when the gap between the sacrifices made by people, and the service they receive from politicians, grows this big it leads to a weariness in the heart of a nation’.

Now set those words against three specific things we witnessed over the past week. The first was the ongoing attempt by Sir Keir to insulate himself from the crisis over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as Washington ambassador when – by Starmer’s own admission – he was fully aware Mandelson had maintained a relationship with the world’s most famous paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The second was his decision to belatedly remove the Labour whip from Matthew Doyle, his former communications director, after appointing him to the House of Lords. Even though Starmer had again been aware Doyle had maintained a friendship with a man charged with possessing indecent images of children – a charge that was later proven.

The third was the news he had summarily ousted his Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald, and replaced him with Home Office Permanent Secretary Antonia Romeo. Even though Romeo is the subject of serious allegations of bullying and misuse of taxpayers’ money from her time at the Foreign Office, and multiple Civil Service sources claimed those allegations have not been properly investigated.

So, as I say, what are the rules? When Starmer was elected, they appeared clear. Probity in public office had been grotesquely perverted under Boris Johnson, he charged. So restoring the highest standards of honesty, humility and transparency represented his driving mission.

Without this, there was no hope of delivering the change Britain longed for, he insisted. Then, last week, all that suddenly changed. Even highlighting these issues had in itself suddenly become a dereliction of public duty.

Starmer’s allies began berating the media – the BBC in particular – for focusing on Mandelson rather than the Government’s policy agenda.

On Wednesday I was chided by a minister for my own part in focusing on Westminster intrigue rather than the Government’s achievements. So this appears to be the new rule. Or the Starmer Rule, if you like.

Under the Tories, breaches of standards in public office went to the heart of their mismanagement of the nation. But under him, they are of secondary importance. Not to be confused with the serious business of establishing breakfast clubs and preventing teenagers from accessing TikTok.

Then there are the rules surrounding ministerial responsibility. Prior to last week, Starmer was again clear.

During the Labour leadership election he piously demanded: ‘Hear me out! I had 8,000 staff for five years as the Director of Public Prosecutions… when they made mistakes, I carried the can. I never turn on my staff, and you should never turn on your staff.’

It was a theme he repeatedly pressed, to devastating effect, against Johnson and his Cabinet through the Covid crisis and beyond. ‘It’s no good the Prime Minister flailing around, trying to blame others. It’s time he took responsibility for his own failures,’ he railed repeatedly.

Yet, in the past week, this rule has also now been inverted.

He has turned on – and turfed out – every one of his most senior officials. His chief of staff. His director of communications. His Cabinet Secretary.

As another senior government official told me: ‘I struggle to think of a PM more willing to throw under the bus those who have been loyal to him.’

So this is the other new Starmer Rule. The buck should have stopped with Boris Johnson. But there is no need for it to even pause for breath when it’s in the vicinity of himself.

Then there are the rules on due political process. As a former DPP, Sir Keir was once a stickler for these. When an internal investigation found Priti Patel was guilty of bullying as Home Secretary, but Boris Johnson stood by her, Starmer turned on him.

‘The Prime Minister has previously said he loathes bullying. Yet when one of his own ministers is found to have bullied their staff he ignores the damning report sat on his desk and instead protects them,’ he raged.

But in the past week this rule has also gone out of the window. His choice for Cabinet Secretary faces her own serious allegations of bullying. Numerous sources say she has not even been properly investigated over those claims.

The new Starmer Rule? Due process no longer matters. Parachute her into the most senior job in the Civil Service regardless.

This is the reality.

For all Labour’s grandiloquent talk of ‘change’, nothing has actually changed. The rules of the game under Starmer are the same as those that existed under Boris Johnson, and every one of their predecessors.

Rule One. Not getting caught in a lie is the same as telling the truth. Rule Two. If you do get caught, never, ever take responsibility yourself. Find someone else to take the fall. Rule Three. When political expedience dictates, ensure there are no rules.

Maybe there was a time when Keir Starmer genuinely believed he would be different. Perhaps when he stood on the steps of Downing Street that first morning, he might have convinced himself he really would transform the culture of British politics.

But now he, just like everyone else in the country, knows the truth. Which is that when it comes to the crunch, the rules governing the Starmer premiership are as duplicitous and hypocritical and mendacious and self-serving as they always were.

The transactional attitude to abuse and bullying. The appropriation of the word ‘responsibility’ as a soundbite, rather than a credo.

The morality of self-interest dictating political ends can justify any malign means.

For years the voters have complained ‘they’re all the same’.

Last week Keir Starmer proved they are right.