An election year, a tired government accused of being in power too long, and a bickering party. This was the backdrop to the coup against Gordon Brown in 2010 when Geoff Hoon – the defence secretary under Tony Blair – and his fellow ex-minister Patricia Hewitt called for a secret ballot. The coup was a miserable failure and became an example of how not to do it. Hoon conceded in less than 24 hours that they had failed and it was ‘over’.

What went wrong? At the time it was attributed to a combination of bad timing, half-hearted plotters and the failure of the most credible candidate (David Miliband) to come forward. As with John Redwood’s 1995 challenge to John Major, the result of the coup was to shore up the prime minister while at the same time signalling to the voters that the governing party was split ahead of a general election.

Sunak has signalled he’d like an end-of-year election but the challenge will be keeping the party together that long

As the Tory right goes to battle with Rishi Sunak, the talk in Conservative circles is whether another such spectacle could be on the cards. ‘There are some serious Hoon/Hewitt-type morons around at the moment,’ says a recent departee of 10 Downing Street. Few believe that there are the numbers for any successful move against the Prime Minister before the election – but that doesn’t mean there won’t be an attempt. MPs who believe they’re on track to lose their seats are capable of anything.

Sunak suffered the biggest revolt of his premiership this week with 60 Conservative MPs on the right rebelling against his Rwanda plan. He has lost three members on the payroll – including two deputy chairmen of his party. One, Lee Anderson, is a straight-talking grassroots favourite who had been handed the role to assure MPs and voters the government cared about the Red Wall.

Since the departure of Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, as home secretary and immigration minister respectively, there has been a critical mass of rebels against Sunak – who use media interviews and articles to regularly criticise his judgment. Adding to Sunak’s woes was the publication of a YouGov MRP mega-poll in the Telegraph that suggested the party is on course for a 1997-style defeat with Keir Starmer winning a majority of 120. In that result, not a single Red Wall MP who won in 2019 would retain their seat. ‘On a scale of one to ten, I’d say the mood in the party is around a three,’ says a senior Tory.

Polls can be wrong (YouGov polls before the 2015 and 2019 elections vastly under-estimated the number of seats the Tories would win) but there isn’t a pollster in London whose figures are not pointing to a landslide Labour win. The official line from the MPs voting and organising against Sunak is that they want to help him by steering him in the right direction. ‘Nobody is coming for him,’ insists a figure in the rebel movement. ‘All he needs to do is bring a bill that works.’

Sunak says these rebels are asking the impossible as the Rwandan government would not accept any deal that is unlawful, and One Nation Tories could rebel if he goes further. This is why so many ministers and MPs see this as a push against Sunak – the Tory regicidal instinct surfacing again. As Lord Frost, a former cabinet minister, puts it: ‘If we don’t act, there will soon only be smoking rubble left.’

In Downing Street, aides are aware of the threat, seeing the bill this week, the double by-election in February and local elections in May as a series of events that need to be survived. The same arguments which Brown’s praetorian guard used on rebellious Labour MPs are being used again: it would be electoral madness to wound the leader this close to an election.

Or, as the official Tory strategist Isaac Levido put it in a presentation to MPs on Monday: ‘Let me be clear. Divided parties fail.’ He accused the anonymous Conservative donors who funded the poll – and implicitly those who are doing their bidding – of ‘throwing in the towel’ and being ‘more interested in what happens after the election rather than fighting it – making the pathway narrower and steeper.’ He’s right in that many of the rebels regard the election as already lost and are planning for what happens after it. Much of this is about shoring up positions in order to blame the defeat on Sunak’s timidity so that his successor can come forward on a more populist platform.

Even MPs who bridle at taking election advice from a never-elected Lord Frost have doubts about Sunak’s strategy. He wants to put the economy front and centre, but other Tories are adopting their own plans to try to keep their seats. Some Red Wall MPs backed amendments to toughen up the Rwanda Bill this week to send a message to their home voters. ‘It’s not far off campaigning against the government to show you care,’ says an MP who held the line.

Sunak never chose the Rwanda scheme. He inherited it from Boris Johnson – and, as chancellor, raised concerns over its costs and likely efficacy. He was warned by a one-time close ally not to phrase it as ‘stop the boats’ in his five priorities (reduce them, perhaps, but stop?), but he did so regardless, thinking it would draw a dividing line with Labour.

Rebels argue that it could just be a matter of time before Sunak is proved wrong – in law, the courts could still strike down his Rwanda Bill – resulting in a backlash that goes far beyond their group. Word is that Labour peers won’t block the Rwanda Bill, as they think it would be better to let it pass, then watch it flop. ‘He’s botched things,’ says one critic. ‘He could limp on to the election but he has no appeal to the 2019 coalition.’ ‘We’re potentially on for a Labour landslide driven by apathy,’ says a former minister.

Sunak has signalled that he’d like an end-of-year election (perhaps November) but half the challenge will be keeping the party together for that long. The May local elections are likely to be a Tory bloodbath. It’s no coincidence that members of the shadow cabinet have gone back to talking about an early election. ‘I struggle to see how he gets past the local elections without a challenge,’ says a Labour shadow minister.

When Labour rebels were failing to remove Brown, the Tories mocked them for dismal plotting skills. Labour now wishes to portray the Conservatives as the natural party of regicide, rather than of government. This week shows that Tory rebels may yet play right into their hands.