Alan Clark and the toppling of a Prime Minister

As mentioned earlier this week, am currently re-reading the Alan Clark diaries.

This entry from the 19th November 1990, two days before Margaret Thatcher was toppled, seems especially pertinent to how the House of Commons will probably behave next week as the Parliamentary Labour Party struggles with the decision of whether they should dump the Prime Minister.

"The whole house is in ferment. Little groups, conclaves everywhere. Only in the dining room does some convention seem to have grown (I presume because no one trusts their dining companions) that we don't talk 'shop'...But in the corridors is is all furtive, whispering and glancing over shoulders. The institutional confidence, that special grimacing style of speech out of the corner of the mouth, eyes focusing in another direction, is now it seems the only way of communication".

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PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

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