An election year, a tired government accused of being in power too long, and a bickering party. This was the backdrop to the coup against Gordon Brown in 2010 when Geoff Hoon – the defence secretary under Tony Blair – and his fellow ex-minister Patricia Hewitt called for a secret ballot. The coup was a miserable failure and became an example of how not to do it. Hoon conceded in less than 24 hours that they had failed and it was ‘over’.
What went wrong? At the time it was attributed to a combination of bad timing, half-hearted plotters and the failure of the most credible candidate (David Miliband) to come forward. As with John Redwood’s 1995 challenge to John Major, the result of the coup was to shore up the prime minister while at the same time signalling to the voters that the governing party was split ahead of a general election.
Sunak has signalled he’d like an end-of-year election but the challenge will be keeping the party together that long
As the Tory right goes to battle with Rishi Sunak, the talk in Conservative circles is whether another such spectacle could be on the cards.
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