A different kind of stasis waits after the polls: a candidate gridlock where all Starmer’s potential successors are problematic in their own way

Westminster politics is currently consumed by the fact that the May elections are next week.

On Tuesday night Labour MPs voted down a Tory proposal that would have seen the prime minister referred to the privileges committee over his handling of the Mandelson scandal . Just 15 Labour MPs – mostly long-term critics of the PM – voted for the Tory motion; 53 did not vote, not all of whom abstained.

Morgan Jones is the co-editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy