Ten years ago, as polls closed in the local and European elections, it looked like a coup against the unpopular Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown was underway. At 10pm, James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary resigned.
Peter Mandelson, the Prince of Darkness himself, came back from the sidelines to knock heads together and take the temperature of the resentment against Brown down to merely simmering for the remainder of his time in office.
I did wonder if we were about to see history repeating itself when Andrea Leadsom resigned this evening.
We shall see how many of the Cabinet are left in post at the end of Friday. Although if there was a good time for a government to implode on eve of poll, when they are in single digits in some polls and facing a hoofing is probably it.
The political crisis faced by Brown was huge at the time but seems insignificant when you compare it to the clusterbollocks engineered by David Cameron and turbo-charged by Theresa May.
But some of us have stuff to do for polling day tomorrow, so my request to Cabinet ministers considering their permission is to resign early so we can all get to our beds.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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