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.
