My colleague Patrick Baker has also done this on the fab Westminster Insider pod

BUT ... a PM who is good enough can conquer the building.

As ex-Blair aide John McTernan put it: “The problem with any government is, if you don’t know what you want to do, how are you going to know how to do it?

“And then you blame your tools. The house is a tool."

No. 10 gravitates toward small groups and "silo thinking."

The 8.45 a.m. has Starmer and just over half a dozen key aides including McSweeney, his two deputies, Allan and Cabinet enforcers Darren Jones and Jonathan Reynolds.

Previous PMs tried to change the way the building works to little avail

We have stories of Liz Truss’s sweaty aides queuing for a single shower after joining her morning run … Donald Trump dripping orange from his face in an overheated room … the Scooby Doo-style slapstick of finding Boris Johnson ...

Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney have both struggled — like previous occupants — with the building

The embattled PM (usually an open plan kinda guy) regularly escapes the "hustle and bustle of the ground floor" to his first floor study. He's been known to complain about the noise 😬

The pay-off line:

Serious point here is it seems like Tice might be giving up on full DOGE audits of internal council data (which were the original aim back in the summer), amid legal hurdles

He told me a data-sharing agreement isn't “the biggest thing” and “there’s other ways we can get data"

Farage’s decision seems to be a long way off, but the fact he is even able to consider this so openly shows how much capital Reform seems to have right now.

Tice told me: “Everything’s up for review, because nothing’s affordable if we keep spending more than we’re earning.”

It’s part of a deep dive by me on the million-dollar question: what will happen if Reform UK promises to scrap the state pension triple lock?

Would Labour and the Tories ditch it too, or (… more likely) start a virulent attack campaign?

Tice wouldn’t be drawn yet on what might replace defined benefit pensions — saying it can’t be answered in a week or a month

But this could be a big fight with Whitehall. These (typically more generous) schemes covered 82 percent of public sector workers in 2021

There is also a strategy to pin the failings on Tories and Farage

But there is tension over how nuanced this messaging should be.

Slagging off Brexit is Labour's old comfort zone but says one official: "You can’t just go around blaming Brexit. It’s saying voters are wrong"

“Phase IV” is in fact the name of a 1970s cult horror film in which humanity is subjugated by a colony of hyper-intelligent ants

One Labour adviser: “I’m actually looking forward to that bit. I won’t have to think about all of this"

🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜

We’re in “Phase 2.” To some it’s already Phase 3, post the Mandelson/Rayner scandals.

So what next?

Well....

But backers of the PM say similar, in less strident terms

MPs have been extremely vocal to whips and No. 10 in private

One Labour adviser: “Everyone’s accepted May is the season finale … They are both that angry and that stupid.”

😬 Ultimately though — for many people — it comes back to the question about the overall project

Neal Lawson of the new Mainstream group (who is definitely no friend of Starmer!) puts it thus: “The underlying foundations of this project are so weak that it endangers the future of the Labour Party.”

💣 The big dangers ahead are the budget (Nov. 26) and elections (May 7)

But also watch out for the e-book of Paul Holden’s “The Fraud,” which is due out mid-October

Holden tells me it will have “considerably new information” on the Labour Together donations row... 👀