"My message is simple and stark – unite or die." It would be something of an overstatement to suggest that, following these words from Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservatives chose death. But the then-Tory leader was gone within 12 months and the party remained locked out of office for another eight years.
Political parties, particularly in first-past-the-post electoral systems, are necessarily coalitions. Unity is the price of power. But when that power slips away, participants often conclude that unity is no longer worth the hassle.
Case in point: earlier week, Rishi Sunak's campaign director Isaac Levido addressed Conservative MPs, during which he urged them to unify and direct their attacks on Labour, not each other. It wasn't an instant success.
Indeed only hours later, Tory MPs from rival factions had returned to bickering on the airwaves, parliamentary private secretaries were resigning and the prime minister faced a major rebellion over the Rwanda bill.
This was in fact the largest revolt of his premiership, with 60 Conservative MPs backing an amendment by Sir Bill Cash that sought to ensure that neither British nor international law could be used to prevent or delay an asylum seeker reaching Britain by 'small boat' being removed to Rwanda
Sunak is still expected to win tonight's crucial vote. Though that is not necessarily saying much, given that the last time a government lost at third reading the year was 1977 and Donna Summer was poised to top the charts with 'I Feel Love', which in fairness is an absolute banger.
The problems Sunak faces over the Rwanda Bill may be exacerbating his political weakness, but it is really more of a symptom of it. The issue at hand is that his MPs think he is leading them to electoral oblivion. This feeling was not exactly dispelled by a YouGov poll, helpfully splashed across Monday's Daily Telegraph, which suggested that the Tories would be reduced to a rump 169 seats with Labour securing a majority of 160.
The same poll also forecasts that every single Red Wall seat won from Labour in 2019 would be lost, a fact that cannot be separated from the resignations of deputy party chairs Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith. Bad news, even if being made a deputy chair of the Tories is a little like being handed a participation trophy at sports day.
Leading a political party is hard enough. Presiding over one where half the MPs think they'll lose their seats is virtually impossible. Short of promising unhappy backbenchers well-paid jobs in the private sector, it is not obvious what power Sunak has left to threaten or cajole.
