Just bringing you a little something from over the paywall, about the day former Leicester West MP Patricia Hewitt tried to oust Gordon Brown.

According to Peter Mandelson’s diaries  the person who informed him of the Blairite plot to topple Gordon Brown was, er, Tony Blair. Makes you wonder just how close he was to the move…

“I had the first hint that something was up shortly after 11am on Wednesday, the day of the first PMQs on our return to Westminster. I was told that Tony [Blair] had got wind of rumours of a move against Gordon. So I telephoned him.
We both agreed that if anything happened I should not be involved in encouraging it, but nor could I go into overdrive as I did when James resigned. Minutes later, Sue Nye [Director of Government Relations] called and said there were reports of an initiative by Geoff Hoon and “others” against Gordon.
Downing Street had decided not to tell him about it before his Dispatch Box bout with David Cameron, a sufficiently nerve-racking enterprise as it was.
With the exception of a handful of ministers, principally Andy Burnham and Shaun Woodward, and, rather later, Ed Balls, the Cabinet was lying low, and backbenchers even lower. My office was being besieged with requests for comment.”
But such was the ‘clout’ of Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, Mandy reveals, that key cabinet players didn’t even raise the issue in a meeting with the PM that day. Bit embarrassing.