Loonsday Clock nears midnight while Tory MPS plot regicide again Marina Hyde

I wouldn't say I'm a Conservative confidencevote prepper, but like many in the political survivalist community I do prefer to keep track of the threat level.

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Over the past few years, what you might call the Loonsday Clock has mostly hovered at somewhere between four minutes and one minute to midnight. The British people have accepted this is a fact of their lives, even if the prospect of the Tories going into opposition has been greeted with the same sort of exhausted relief that Kingsley Amis felt about the eventual loss of his libido: "For 50 years, it was like being chained to a lunatic."

During the past eight years (feels like 50), the fateful midnight chimes have rung out on five separate occasions on a series of prime ministers. As for what time it is now, I am afraid the news is... not great.

The local elections on 2 May are widely expected to be such a calamitous event for Rishi Sunak's party that even the newly knighted Christopher Nolan may be momentarily tempted to make a film about them, although the utter absence of anything resembling a great man of history would ultimately preclude his involvement. It would not, however, preclude Conservative party involvement in a spring regicide attempt. They will almost certainly get enough letters to have one of their endlessly constructive confidence votes - which Sunak will then win.