'Critics say it's a long rollercoaster ride ahead for Labour - but the panic is over'

Peter Mandelson reckons: “We are now in the long campaign for the general election. And it’s going to be a tough, endless, rollercoaster ride.”

Quite. That was just after news about problems in Rochdale began to break and Labour started to come under some pressure. He added: “That’s what hotly contested elections are like so everyone better get strapped in for the ride.”

Never really associated Mandy with white-knuckle rides, saw him more as a ghost train man, but goes to show you never know. Anyways, it was quite the week for Labour but I’m not sure it was as up and down as the headlines made out.

A lot of people I spoke to on Friday, after the by-elections, were struggling to make sense of it all. Even the most seasoned are still running on nerves after a week like this, and lack of sleep doesn’t help.

Labour had to quickly, although not quickly enough for some, dump their candidate in the upcoming Rochdale by-election for touting an anti-Israel conspiracy theory. It wasn’t handled well but it wasn’t terrible. Depends on what you read though.

“Debacle” was being bandied about, I heard “catastrophe” at one point, but the handling of it really wasn’t that bad. Then some friendly polling was released, showing the lead was intact, a Tory wipeout was still on the cards and various Conservative big beasts could lose their jobs. And that cheered everyone up.

“We’re back,” one staffer told me. But you never really went away. Hot on the heels of that came the double by-election wins. We are still in the aftermath as I write this but the headline figures are easy. Big wins for Labour, interesting places, impressive swings. The most by-elections lost in a Parliament since the Second World War. Hard to argue with that.

So everyone can relax a bit. A rollercoaster week indeed. But the polls are still healthy, the panic is over. Except – and this is not a bad thing – a little bit of doubt has crept in.

The Rochdale bit was a mess, there are a couple of polls that show narrowing, and turnout was low in both the by-elections. Again, no panic, but a few warning signs. The old fault lines are still there, there’s a bit of doubt around the leader, some policy would be lovely.

Getting rid of complacency is a good thing. Labour can just hold things together and keep focus. The coming months don’t have to be a rollercoaster.

Even if it were, rollercoasters are not Mr Sunak’s forte. (If this were a lesser column, that would be the set up for a joke about Mr Sunak’s height and not being tall enough to ride. Not here. Not us. We are bigger than that.)