A week or so after the shock of the local elections first began to reverberate through the Labour Party, the future of the prime minister is hardly any clearer. Sir Keir Starmer is proving far more resistant to going quietly than anyone expected, while his principal rival, Andy Burnham, seems far more determined to overcome the obstacles to his entering No 10 than he was last autumn. Wes Streeting, the only cabinet minister to resign in this crisis, launched his leadership campaign – although it was never acknowledged as such – then effectively ended it for lack of support, only to revive it again with the news that Mr Burnham might well have found a suitable constituency to stand in, with the permission (now confirmed) of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to go ahead. Ideally, this contest would not be happening, and the government, backed by the party, would be “getting on with the job”, as the Starmer loyalists (and indeed Kemi Badenoch) put it.…