Running the country is such a piffling business, I can see how politicians could get bored with trying to make people’s lives better and indulge in a spot of bun fighting. There’s really nothing more thrilling in politics than watching a leadership mandate implode. Sag, really, like someone’s opened the oven door too early.

Will he, won’t he – the prime minister seems to have made it clear that he’s not packing up the furniture in the Number 10 flat until someone has the decency to stick the knife in his front, which I think is eminently respectable. If people are going to gang up on you they really ought to feel it.  Except – and this is a canny calculation on the PM’s part – no one with any clout will actually be brave enough to do the deed, so the prime minister can squat in Downing Street as long as he likes, basically. I mean he actually can now that Labour has changed the rules on no fault evictions. Someone will have to give him six months’ notice, but I don’t know who actually owns the building. Would it be the king?

There have been a series of ‘dramatic’ resignations today of the most junior and inconsequential ministers who will have emailed their letters over (CCing in various media outlets of course) and then panicked afterwards that nothing will actually happen. It’s been a real who’s who of who’s that – not because no one wants the top job, but rather because some of them want it too badly, and it’s not really good for the old image to have been the one who betrayed the boss.

It’s not a conundrum, in the classical sense – you know, like whether the chicken or the egg comes first. In this case the chicken won’t make a move until a series of minor eggs have been smashed in a speculative fashion. Like vultures, the big names only circle once the whiff of decay has started to emanate. You have to feel for all of these MPs who worry for their jobs come the next in election in – checks notes – over three years. Perhaps this uncertainty and stress could be channelled into some sort of sympathy for the general public? Crazy thought. Just as I type, the minister for victims has stepped down. Who’s going to speak out for them now?