He’s been a catastrophe, however I nonetheless consider he is an honest man. And that is how Starmer’s time in No 10 will finish, more than likely inside days… by DAN HODGES

This is how I think it will end. Sometime over the weekend, Keir Starmer will gain a temporary reprieve from the firestorm engulfing him and his premiership. He will take off his tie, pour himself a large glass of wine, kick back, and come to a couple of unwelcome but inevitable conclusions.

The first will be that his position is now politically irrecoverable. Yesterday, he attempted to ‘clarify’ his bombshell admission in the House of Commons that he had indeed been aware Peter Mandelson had continued his relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein had been jailed, at the time he appointed him as ambassador to Washington. And that attempt ended in utter disaster.

Staggeringly, Starmer claimed Mandelson had successfully duped him by convincing him he had ‘barely known’ Epstein. Even though their friendship was common knowledge across Westminster, had been widely chronicled in the media and was specifically detailed in a vetting document compiled by civil servants and forwarded to Starmer at the time of his appointment.

By that time the Prime Minister, wine in hand, will probably already be aware of further revelations, published in the weekend’s newspapers about Epstein, Mandelson and – crucially – their connection to a hostile foreign state. Revelations that will deal a further blow to Sir Keir’s assertion that he was in possession of no objective information that could have led him to reverse Mandelson’s appointment.

And he will be acutely aware that his attempt to block the publication of material relating to Mandelson’s appointment, on the ludicrously spurious grounds of national security, has failed. And that, soon, information will be published that chronicles the full extent of Mandelson’s involvement in the very heart of his government.

As one minister told me: ‘People don’t understand. Peter wasn’t just Keir’s ambassador. Along with Morgan [McSweeney, his chief of staff] he was basically running the entire operation. In the last reshuffle, Peter made specific appointments. And he was directly involved in selecting the first Cabinet.’

Then Starmer’s thoughts will turn away from his personal position and drift to his party and the country at large. As I wrote soon after he was initially elected Labour leader, Sir Keir is not, and never has been, a political creature. Someone who had worked closely with him on his leadership campaign told me Starmer had once remarked to them: ‘I don’t really like politics. I don’t understand it. And I’m not that good at it.’

The Prime Minister has never been one of those MPs who insist their mother pushed them around in a pram stuffed with Labour leaflets. The movement has never been in his DNA. When he recently made an awful, crude joke at PMQs one of his colleagues messaged me to observe ‘no one who genuinely understands the Labour Party would have said that’.

But Starmer still understands the debt he owes the party that carried him on its shoulders into Downing Street, and to those who trusted him with their votes 18 long months ago.

When I wrote a couple of weeks ago that his blocking of Andy Burnham showed he intended to ‘do a Biden’ and bed-block the premiership, even if it meant leading his party to destruction, an ally of his phoned me and said, ‘You’re wrong. When the time comes, Keir will know to walk away’.

Keir Starmer knows that time has now arrived. Angela Rayner has told friends she is moving. Wes Streeting is teetering on the edge of resignation, calculating whether or not get out ahead of a scandal that may consume him, given his own friendship with Mandelson. I’m told Burnham is considering kicking down the door to Westminster by making a move for the safe seat of Bootle.

So, while it may take a short time for the pretenders to gather their supporters and unsheathe their blades, Starmer knows they are about to make their move. And that, when they do, there will be no one to stand in their way.

Over the past 48 hours, his MPs have decisively turned their backs on him. Meanwhile, his Cabinet colleagues have disowned him. With the exception of the hapless housing minister Steve Reed, not a single one came to his defence in the wake of Wednesday’s disastrous PMQs performance.

But there is one voice above all others that I believe will convince Keir Starmer to do the decent thing. His own.

No one has been more critical of our Prime Minister during the past torturous and disastrous months than me.

But I genuinely believe that, deep down, Keir Starmer is a decent man. And that, when he looks back over the grotesque spectacle of this week’s attempt to justify and legitimise his appointment of Mandelson – and by extension Mandelson’s toxic relationship with one of the world’s most notorious paedophiles – shame will overcome ambition.

In the wake of his catastrophic performance at yesterday’s press conference, I would not be surprised if, in the next few days, the Prime Minister announces his resignation.

But if he does try to stagger on, that attempt will reach its denouement on February 26, when Labour loses the Gorton and Denton by-election. At that moment, Keir Starmer will know for certain he is leading his party to damnation and opening the door to Nigel Farage and a Reform government. And at that moment, he will step aside.

I may be wrong in my assessment of the Prime Minister’s character. The long, lonely nights in Downing Street may have robbed him of the last vestiges of his dignity and self-respect.

In which case, he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming from the building by his colleagues.

But I genuinely believe it will not have to come to that. The Mandelson scandal will represent a squalid and sordid end to his premiership. But if he opts to leave in a manner and on a timetable of his own choosing, he will be seen to have ultimately ended things honourably.

And I think he will want that to be his epitaph. The man who came into power with the lofty – if frequently self-indulgent – ambition of restoring public faith in politics has manifestly failed in his task. But as a wise man once observed, all political careers end in failure. And there is no humiliation in that.

Whereas Starmer will be humiliated if he tries to cling to office when it is palpably obvious that he has now completely lost the confidence of his colleagues and the electorate.

Keir Starmer has been a disastrous Prime Minister. But he has the opportunity to show that in the final reckoning, he was prepared to put his country first.

At some point in the coming days, I expect him to grasp it.