When Lord Charlie Falconer says the game is up it feels like a ravens leaving the tower moment for Sir Keir Starmer.
Like the legend that the fortress will fall if the ravens leave, the walls of protection that the prime minister has erected around himself in his constantly besieged premiership are about to come tumbling down.
And it is not just Tony Blair’s former Lord Chancellor telling the prime minister that his time is up, after Andy Burnham crushed Reform in Makerfield and now looks set to take over the party leadership and snatch Downing Street.
Former deputy leader Harriet Harman and former home secretary Alan Johnson are also among the Labour grandees pleading with Sir Keir to go.
Ministers and MPs are queuing up to give him this same message this weekend as the prime minister is holed up in Downing Street.
Lord Falconer is not known as someone who would rock the boat or show disloyalty.
But asked on Radio 4’s Today Programme on Saturday morning about whether Sir Keir should stand in a leadership election against Mr Burnham, he was clear.
“My advice, sadly, would be: ‘don’t stand.’”
He warned that a competition would be “very difficult” and “bad for the country.”
His advice could also be taken to mean former health secretary Wes Streeting too as voices increasingly call for a coronation of Mr Burnham.
On Friday evening, Baroness Harman was also forthright saying “the herd is not just moving against Keir Starmer, it’s stampeding”.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson, another loyal grandee, told Andrew Marr on LBC: “If I could speak to him now I’d say ‘it’s over Keir’, Andy is going to stand and he’s going to win.”
Those experienced voices are reflecting the 100 Labour MPs who have already told the prime minister he needs to resign.
Ministers, including members of the cabinet such as Heidi Alexander, Shabana Mahmood, Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper, are all giving him the same message.
They have all seen how Mr Burnham crushed Nigel Farage and Reform UK in a constituency that Reform should win easily. Increasing Labour’s vote share in the current circumstances is an astonishing achievement.
What it has meant though is that the prime minister has appeared even more diminished and isolated and the appetite for a contest as opposed to a coronation for Mr Burnham has disappeared.
It is astonishing that less than two years after a massive election victory with a major of 170 a prime minister should be reduced to this but he has paid the price of not being able to deal with Reform.
