Chris Mason: Unpicking a messy day for the government

"It's not been our finest 24 hours in government," one senior figure in government acknowledged to me, after mudslinging one way and another, some in public, plenty more in private.

It began with anonymous briefings to journalists, including myself, that Keir Starmer would fight any attempt to remove him - and that cabinet ministers, including Wes Streeting, were plotting challenges.

Streeting insisted he was loyal to the PM and called on those behind the briefings to be sacked, and the PM announced that any attacks on his ministers were "unacceptable".

Questions about whether the PM had authorised the original briefings to flush out potential challengers - and whether those behind them were doing so with his knowledge, or approval, were thrown into the mix.

Would there be a leak inquiry? Would there be sackings at what Streeting called a "toxic" Number 10 operation?

What were those close to the prime minister hoping to achieve?

I have been making loads of phone calls to patch together what actually happened and where all this leaves Keir Starmer's government.

There are two key facts at the heart of all of this: the government is unpopular and so is the prime minister.

These facts are the rocket fuel behind the constant conversations I hear about what Labour is trying to do about it and what it might mean for how long Sir Keir Starmer carries on in Downing Street.

But let's get to the aftermath of all that mudslinging.

The prime minister and Health Secretary Wes Streeting spoke on the phone on Wednesday evening to patch things up.

I hear Sir Keir apologised to Streeting in the brief call and they agreed to talk in further detail "soon".

They didn't talk about Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister's chief of staff - who has become a lightning rod for criticism from everyone including the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch in public to Labour figures junior and senior in private.

Widely credited as the mastermind of Labour's election landslide and the political brain behind Sir Keir's quick rise since switching from Director of Public Prosecutions, McSweeney is also among the first to face criticism when the Downing Street machine is perceived to have stuttered, stumbled or outright failed.

He is not responding to requests for comment, as some call for his head on a stick.

His critics argue that in a Downing Street where McSweeney is called on to make plenty of big political judgements, he should take responsibility for how all of this unfolded.

Others in the building insist no-one who works there was behind any briefing against a cabinet minister, after Wes Streeting said whoever was responsible should be sacked.

In No 10, there is a tacit acknowledgement that the health secretary handled a round of pre-arranged interviews on Wednesday morning with dignity, aplomb and humour - despite being confronted by incessant questions about his own ambitions because those briefings about him came just hours before.

For some Labour MPs, he demonstrated a nimbleness and knack for communication they only wish the Prime Minister shared.

It also won't have gone unnoticed that at least some of those briefings that attempted to shore up the prime minister ended up creating an opportunity for Streeting to say he shared the sentiment of his colleagues who have described Downing Street as toxic and sexist and that those who were behind the briefings should be sacked.

What a mess.

The prime minister, I am told, is "incandescent" at how all of this has played out and is looking into how it all happened.

What appears to have gone awry, from No 10's perspective, is both volume and emphasis.

Firstly, they had, perhaps naively, imagined that the briefings would generate some news, but not wall-to-wall headline news.

It turned out to be much louder than they had anticipated.

I'd say a prime minister letting this kind of thing be known, via supporters, less than 18 months after a landslide general election win, was always going to be front page, top of bulletins stuff – as it turned out to be, on these pages and others.

And secondly, on emphasis, they insist they hadn't expected so much talk about Wes Streeting, which was then massively magnified by all those interviews he was booked in to do on Wednesday morning.

Others, it must be said, concluded that that was precisely the intention.

It has been another few days where Labour folk in government talk about lessons being learnt and on the backbenches plenty are irritated at what they see as an absurd spectacle playing out that they have to firstly witness and then attempt to defend.

And they would rather not do either.

But a government and a prime minister whose nervousness about their predicament is even bigger than their big majority will likely see repeats of this saga, unless they can quickly address the deep lack of popularity that drives it.

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