If I had to pick my favourite failed coup of the Gordon Brown premiership, it would have to be the Patricia Hewitt-Geoff Hoon plot. It was early January 2010 when the former cabinet ministers called for a secret ballot of Labour MPs to effectively force the prime minister out.
Of course, far from a stampede of signatures, they were greeted with a combination of derision and disapproval, as frontbencher after frontbencher lined up to profess their total (if somewhat implausible) support for Brown.
Blink and you missed it, but this attempted ousting just had so many tremendous qualities to elevate it above all others. First, that Hoon, a former chief whip and defence secretary, appeared to have little intelligence on how his colleagues would respond. Second, that there were only five months until the next election. And third, the sheer speed with which the coup fizzled out only served to reaffirm that Brown would live to fight the campaign.
But really, the most ridiculous element of the coup was that there had been so many previous failed attempts to force Brown – a man not averse to organising his own palace coups – out of Number 10. Just six months earlier, following Labour's calamitous performance in the local and European elections, work and pensions secretary James Purnell resigned, calling on the prime minister to go. Neither plausible alternative – David Miliband or Alan Johnson – pounced, and Brown went on to lead Labour to defeat.
It is in that (probably too much) context that we turn to Sir Simon Clarke's column in today's Telegraph, in which he warns that Rishi Sunak is leading the Tories to electoral oblivion. This isn't quite a coup. For one thing, Clarke hasn't suggested an alternative leader. It's not even obvious he wants one right now.
Instead, this is the latest offensive in the shadow war taking place in the Conservative Party over who should be the next leader following an expected defeat. Clarke is seeking to pin the blame on Sunak, somewhat overlooking his role in making Liz Truss prime minister, whose 'mini-Budget' did so much to tarnish the Tory brand.
Failed coups, open letters and general infighting are something of a lagging indicator for political ill-health. After more than a decade in power, and with the polls looking bleak, governments tend to turn inward, thinking more about the succession than the election. In a sense, the Tories are simply playing the part.
In the comment pages, Michael Wolff suggests Donald Trump has more in common with Taylor Swift, Lionel Messi and Minecraft than he does with Joe Biden. Nancy Durrant says Greta Gerwig being snubbed for an Oscar while Ryan Gosling wasn't proves Barbie's entire point. While Jamie Graham, editor-at-large of Total Film magazine, explains how he managed to watch 967 movies last year.
And finally, from cat memes in the 1870s to Hello Kitty, Maddy Mussen calls Somerset House’s latest exhibition, Cute, a must-visit for any adult child of the internet age.
