Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney was originally pulling his levers. He directed Starmer to ditch the Corbyn era hard-left baggage and make Labour electable again. It worked. Starmer said his lines and followed the script. But now McSweeney has resigned. His marionette is still in place, but the master has departed. Yesterday, we saw who’s pulling his strings now.

Starmer’s policy positions jerk and twitch by the day. He locks himself away reading policy documents, but rarely draws any conclusions, and never makes decisions. He’ll betray cabinet colleagues in a heartbeat, as home secretary Shabana Mahmood is the latest to discover.

Mahmood braved the ire of the Labour left to set out sensible immigration reforms, apparently with Starmer’s backing. If he had backbone, he’d stand by her. Instead, we got yet another screeching U-turn. All it took was one tug of by our PM’s new puppet master.

Her name? Angela Rayner. She’s pulling his wire now and she’s about to drag Labour in a very different direction.

In contrast to Starmer, Rayner can stand on her own two feet. She can move her own arms and legs too, without prompting. Her head is full of soggy stuffing, but that’s the Labour left for you. Her latest intervention was a calculated pitch to take control of the Labour Party. By branding the Mahmood’s immigration plans “un-British”, she deliberately undermined Starmer and rallied the party against his flaccid leadership.

This is her route back to power. She’s taking him down from the left, rallying activists, backbenchers and unions who think Labour has drifted too far from its roots. Her message is simple. The party is running out of time, and she’s the one to save it.

Calls for higher welfare will further erode the incentive to work while blowing a hole in the public finances. With the economy flatlining and oil prices surging, this is the worst possible moment to double down on Rayner’s left-wing orthodoxy. That won’t stop her.

Rayner is building a power base and positioning herself as the authentic voice of the party. Starmer just wobbles and wavers, with nobody left to steady him. Rayner knows exactly where to pull his strings – all the way to the left.

If Labour is hammered in the May elections, she may cut those strings altogether. Starmer will flop to the ground like the empty piece of puppetry he always was.

Rayner would be a nightmare as PM. But she has qualities Starmer lacks. Character, direction, energy, political instinct. She would take the fight to Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch, Zack Polanski and even US president Donald Trump. The party’s base may applaud her performance, but the country would pay a terrifying price. Soon we could all be dancing to her tune.