Isabel Hardman

After a day of furious briefings between factions, the Labour Party has fallen mysteriously – and ominously – quiet. Shadow cabinet members I’ve spoken to are none the wiser. They are waiting by their phones to hear the latest moves in a reshuffle that was expected to begin at some point today but which has only managed to achieve one thing so far: an almighty and very ugly row about the sacking of Angela Rayner. And that was 24 hours ago. I understand that there should still be something later this evening, but the main problem facing Starmer is that he is trying to move Rayner from party chair and also get a new chief whip, replacing the very long-in-the-tooth Nick Brown.

Sir Keir Starmer has just accepted that Labour needs to 'change' and 'reconnect' with voters, following the Hartlepool by-election result. In a rather stressed and evasive TV interview, the Labour leader repeatedly said his party needed to change, but refused to say whether there would be a reshuffle, or indeed what the party's message would be. He insisted that this went 'beyond' a reshuffle or other questions of personnel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utFBBwoqvdY The reason that Starmer was asked so often about whether there would be a reshuffle is that many in his party are pressing for a number of big changes. The three people in the firing line are shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds, Starmer's political secretary Baroness Chapman, and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.

Labour has started bracing itself for a very unpleasant few days of results in elections across the country. As polls close in local, mayoral, devolved assembly and police and crime commissioner elections, as well as the Hartlepool by-election, a party source has said: These were always going to be tough elections for Labour. Keir has always been honest about the mountain we must climb to rebuild trust to win the next general election. Labour is listening and we will continue to change in order to win back the trust of working people in Britain and their communities. Meanwhile, on the BBC’s Question Time, the party’s shadow housing secretary Thangam Debbonaire accepted that Labour’s message wasn’t getting through to voters.

Labour's Liz Kendall is today calling for the government to treat social care in the same way as it treats physical infrastructure. In a speech this afternoon, the shadow care minister said that 'in the century of ageing, social care is as much a part of our economic infrastructure as the roads and the railways'. This is quite a challenging analogy, as the state of the social care sector would make even the most outdated and crumbling parts of the northern rail network look pretty luxurious and well-appointed. Kendall is also speaking as a battle rages within government over whether social care reform will make it into the Queen's Speech.

Matt Hancock was in a rather sassy mood when he took tonight’s coronavirus briefing. It was obvious that he was not going to get as much attention for his announcement that the government has secured another 60 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine for an autumn booster programme, and he came armed with a strategy for dealing with the media focus on the Prime Minister’s conduct. That strategy was to tell journalists that he wasn’t even going to answer their questions.