The current attrition rate of senior figures from the government is running at one a week this autumn.
First Angela Rayner resigns as deputy prime minister, knowing she would be sacked if she didn’t.
Next Lord Mandelson is sacked as the UK’s Ambassador in the United States.
Each followed a similar pattern.
A drip drip of revelations, the prime minister expressing full confidence in them while not in possession of the full facts about them, and then, after a growing sense of inevitability, they’re gone.
In the hours before Lord Mandelson’s sacking, even those in government and outwardly loyal to the prime minister’s position at the time, were struggling.
Mike Tapp, a home office minister appointed just last week, told Radio 4’s Today Programme the emails made him “shudder”.
“It leaves a bad taste in the mouth,” he added.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he was “completely disgusted” by what he had heard.
Then, just before 11am, as foreign office minister Stephen Doughty stood up in the Commons to answer an urgent question on Mandelson, my emails pinged – and Lord Mandelson was a goner.
The Foreign Office statement pointed to “the depth and extent” of the relationship between Mandelson and Epstein, which Downing Street insist they had nott realised until now and what they described as Mandelson’s view “that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged”.
The understands Mandelson disputes the suggestion that he thought Epstein’s conviction was “wrongful”.
Rather, he privately supported his friend, believed was telling the truth and thought the length of his sentence should be challenged.
In an email obtained by The Sun, Mandelson is reported to have told Epstein to “fight for early release”.
This is the third time Lord Mandelson has lost a high profile government job in a career spanning four decades.
He resigned as trade and industry secretary in 1998 after a row about borrowing a third of a million pounds from a ministerial colleague.
In 2001, he resigned as Northern Ireland Secretary after a row about a passport application from an Indian billionaire.
For Sir Keir Starmer, there are now questions about whether he should have been more curious all along about his now former ambassador’s friendship with Epstein.
And he and the Foreign Office begin the hunt for a new ambassador.
There would be a logic in re-appointing Dame Karen Pierce, the previous ambassador who had built relationships with President Trump’s team, given she was there until February and could pick up where she left off.
The other names I hear are being talked about are Richard Moore, the outgoing head of MI6 and Lord Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary.
Some see a merit in making an appointment quickly given the turbulence of the last few days and the imminence of next week’s State visit by President Trump.
Oh and one final thought.
I just bumped into a senior Westminster figure who pondered a once hypothetical which never happened.
Just imagine if the prime minister had appointed Nigel Farage as the UK’s Ambassador in Washington, as was talked up by some (including Farage himself).
Extraordinary as it would have been, it would have avoided this row, and put the man who has become Sir Keir Starmer’s biggest threat out of political harms way.
How different our political debate and the fortunes of some of its biggest parties might have been.
