Yes, it really is only 496 days since Sir Keir Starmer won a colossal general election landslide.
That feels like a different era this morning: a morning on which health secretary Wes Streeting, the government’s designated interviewee on the early media round, has variously accused those at the top of government of a “toxic culture”, of sexism, and called for unnamed officials in Downing Street to be sacked.
He was responding to briefings from allies of Sir Keir that the prime minister would fight any challenge to his leadership, with Streeting’s name mentioned as a potential challenger.
Let’s rewind.
Why is this all playing out today?
There’s a longer-term cause and an immediate cause.
The longer-term cause is that this government is very unpopular. That is the reality displayed by poll after poll. According to some,, external Sir Keir is the most unpopular prime minister in British history.
Labour MPs look at those very same polls and supplement them with their own grim experience of campaigning in their constituencies week-in-week-out.
And then they worry for their own jobs, even if the next general election is a long way away.
That dynamic means that for some months now it has been typical in conversations with Labour figures in Westminster for them to muse upon whether a change of leader would improve their political predicament.
The general assumption among Labour MPs had been that the critical juncture would be in May after elections in Scotland, Wales and parts of England.
But increasingly in recent weeks, with the polling picture remorselessly bleak and anxiety in Labour ranks about what may well prove a controversial Budget, there have been mutterings that Starmer might be challenged sooner rather than later.
One Labour MP told me earlier this month: “It’s all very well to say wait for the locals, but that’s my activist base I’m sending into the gunfire. I can’t lose all my councillors.”
It’s this sense that things may come to a head faster than appreciated which appears to have sparked an extraordinary briefing operation from allies of the prime minister to us at the BBC, as well as various other outlets.
Letting it be known that the prime minister would fight any challenge to his leadership rather than going quietly may well have been designed to shore up Sir Keir’s position, by reminding Labour MPs of the costs – political and economic – of opening up that can of worms.
That was high-risk enough – it’s not generally the done thing in politics to advertise your own weakness – but the decision to identify Streeting as someone coveting the top job was especially incendiary.
It’s worth noting that some around Sir Keir are also concerned about the ambitions of Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary and former leader, and Lucy Powell, Labour’s new deputy leader – who was essentially elected in defiance of Sir Keir.
