On a day of high political drama, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar placed himself centre stage.
As the conspirators circled Sir Keir Starmer, Sarwar made the extraordinary decision – three months from devolved elections – to call for the Prime Minister to resign. His objective was to be the first senior Labour figure to demand Starmer leave office. Unfortunately for him and Scottish Labour, he was also the last to do so.
Even as Sarwar was still speaking, the cabinet – silent all day – rallied round their ailing leader and offered him their support. MPs fell into line. Sarwar’s action was, in short, decisive – only in the opposite way he had intended.
In the moment, without the benefit of hindsight, one can see the grainy logic of Sarwar’s decision. After all, on Monday morning, it genuinely seemed the Prime Minister’s resignation was more likely than not.
Less than 24-hours earlier, Starmer had lost his key aid, Morgan McSweeney – the latest and (so far) most high-profile casualty of the scandal around the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US Ambassador, despite his known association with Jeffrey Epstein.
In normal circumstances, the departure of a senior adviser would not precipitate such regicidal manoeuvrings. But these are far from normal times, and McSweeney was far from a normal advisor.
He identified Starmer as the vehicle through which Labour could be wrested back from the hard left. He engineered his ascent to the leadership and masterminded the 2024 general election landslide. Most importantly, he supplied the apolitical Prime Minister with something he has always lacked: a political backbone, even if it was one many Labour MPs, and perhaps even Starmer himself, never felt entirely comfortable inhabiting.
There is, in short, no Starmer without McSweeney. Even absent the current collapse in public trust - arguably the gravest since the Profumo Affair - his departure would still be deeply consequential.
It was in this context – a Prime Minister apparently mortally wounded – that Sarwar decided to pounce. The writing, he surely assumed, was on the wall. If you must be among those to stab Caesar, best to be the first to strike a blow. The only problem was, no further blows followed.
This leaves the Scottish Labour leader in an incredibly uncomfortable, if not outright precarious, position himself. In three months, he has to fight a devolved election having tried and failed to remove his UK party leader, in whom he has publicly and provocatively declared he has no confidence. Support for Scottish Labour was already falling, and the spectre of a failed coup seems unlikely to rally undecided voters to the flag.
At the same time, his campaign chief, Secretary of State for Scotland Douglas Alexander, is among those who eventually vociferously backed the Prime Minister. Many of his candidates, councillors and MPs are perplexed, disillusioned, or downright furious.
Sarwar may, of course, yet be proved right. With the loss of McSweeney, Starmer now finds himself rudderless, navigating the most turbulent of political storms. The rocks ahead are clear enough: the imminent release of Mandelson’s vetting files and a perilous by-election in Gorton and Denton shortly afterwards, to name but two.
Starmer’s saving grace may lie partly in the apparent ineptitude of the conspirators against him, but also in the Labour Party rulebook; Labour MPs cannot trigger a vote of confidence in their leader, as much as Sarwar or anyone else may want them to.
Instead, a challenger must first secure the backing of at least 20 per cent of the parliamentary party, or around 80 MPs. Only then does a contest pass to the membership. While Starmer as an incumbent leader is technically entitled to appear on the ballot without nominations, in political terms that would surely be untenable.
There is no doubt Starmer is not short of rivals. Several senior figures are known to harbour leadership ambitions: Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband, Wes Streeting, Darren Jones, Shabana Mahmood, Lucy Powell and Bridget Phillipson among them.
Outside cabinet, others - including defence minister Alistair Carns and former transport secretary Louise Haigh - may yet be tempted. While the contest is now likely to come too soon for Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester will still be a key endorsement.
While a leadership contest will almost surely involve only two or possibly three figures, any of the above could reasonably consider themselves in with the chance of securing 80 backers. But that is far from the only issue.
Internal leadership challenges are haunted by the spectre of Michael Hesletine, who was the first mover against Margaret Thatcher, only to lose the leadership once he had precipitated her downfall. Judging by the reaction of the cabinet to Sarwar’s speech, none of them – at this stage at least – want to be the one to wield the knife.
With McSweeney gone and a series of seemingly unbearable pressure points in the coming weeks, that moment will surely soon come. And for Sarwar, after this most monumental and irrevocable of decisions, it cannot come a moment too soon.