Remember when Eric Joyce headbutted a man and four years later, Britain voted to leave the European Union? In February 2012, the then Labour member for Falkirk attacked Conservative MP Stuart Andrew in Parliament's Strangers' Bar and was promptly suspended from the party.
The subsequent selection process for his seat produced a complicated party squabble (I'm really not going to get into it, we are already miles away from what this newsletter is supposed to be about) involving Labour, Unite the Union, Tom Watson and Karie Murphy.
All you really need to know is that it led to Labour leader Ed Miliband changing the rules by which the party leader was elected, from an electoral college system to one member, one vote. This was the system that Jeremy Corbyn – a life-long Eurosceptic who did not exactly pull up trees to support the Remain campaign in 2016 – took full advantage of to be elected leader.
The point of this vignette (and if you want more, check out this great podcast by Jim Waterson) is less about the internal machinations of the Labour Party, and more about how changes to an organisation's rulebook don't necessarily help the people who think they will benefit the most. In this case, it was the Labour right who believed that a one member, one vote system, where registered supporters could also have a say, would result in permanent Blairite hegemony. It, erm, didn't work out that way.
So the Conservatives ought to take note. Late last night, the party revealed the process by which it would elect its new leader. For those counting down the days, you'll have to wait until November to find out. Now, there had been plenty of discussion in the build-up about whether the party should act swiftly, or go long.
The principal downside of a long race is that it leaves a vacuum for Labour to fill. Already, ministers are giving great weight to the idea that they have inherited the worst economic circumstances since the Second World War. This isn't strictly true, but then again, it wasn't true in 2010 that the Labour government had caused the Global Financial Crisis by spending too much on public services. But Labour was too busy picking the wrong Miliband brother to properly counter that particular Osbornite fantasy.
The benefit of going long – at least as far as the more moderate One Nation wing is concerned – is that it gives MPs and party members more time to analyse why they lost the election so badly and thereby avoid a damaging lurch to the right.
The blueprint for this is 2005. The Tories lost that contest under Michael Howard who, rather than resigning immediately, stayed on and promoted that nice young man David Cameron as shadow education secretary. A few months later, Cameron defeated David Davis to become Conservative Party leader. (On reflection, this may have been a more direct cause of Brexit than Eric Joyce's temper, but hey-ho.)
Still, here's the thing. Just because going long in 2005 produced a relatively moderate winner (on the basis that the alternatives were Davis or Liam Fox), doesn't mean it will do so again. The world is quite different in 2024. For one thing, the Tories actually gained seats in the 2005 election, rather than being reduced to a parliamentary rump.
Ultimately, every choice is fraught with risk. The only decision that truly befuddles me is the actual date the Tories have settled on: November 2. That is three days before the US presidential election, meaning the new leader, whoever she may be, will be competing for oxygen with a much more important story.
Sure, Iain Duncan Smith encountered a similar problem, in that his leadership election victory was announced the week of the September 11 terrorist attacks. But 9/11 wasn't in the media grid in quite the same way as a presidential election. Perhaps someone at CCHQ has seen the list of likely candidates and thinks that week might be a good one to bury bad news.
