Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, there is only really one story in town. Despite the relative calm that has

descended over Westminster, since Monday's explosive call for Kirstama to resign from key ally

Anasawa, that is merely a facade, like the duck swimming serenely

atop the pond underneath the surface the legs are kicking furiously, as number 10 fights

and increasingly difficult rearguard action against those wishing to topple the Prime

Minister, as leadership rivals position themselves for a contest that seems more inevitable

than ever. But when will it happen? How do we get to this point? What could Stama do to get through to the May elections and beyond? And if he can't, who is likely as to take over? These are all big questions, so I thought I'd bring in some reinforcements to help us answer them. So with me this week is not only our editor here at Poll Home, Adam Payne, but two top colleagues from my sister title, The House Magazine. Debate editor, Sienna Rogers, making his pod day before us, editor, Frances Elliott. So we're going to start with you, Adam. Just talk us through, like, where we are kind of now. I said in the intro, this relative calm towards the back end of the week is masking the facts that things are still pretty fraught as MPs head back to their constituencies for this half term recess. The thing's going to

calm down or will rebellion kind of only ferment further as they hear from their own voters just

quite how badly this is all going down? You use the word relative there. I think relative is the

key word in that description. It is relative calm. This was Saturday a Thursday morning.

Honestly, Monday feels about eight years ago. But on Monday, that was the moment on Monday afternoon

when it felt like the house of cars could come tumbling down with just one prod. It was when

Anasawa, the Scottish Labour leader,

called on the PM to resign, and then there was all sorts of speculation.

Well, there was all sorts of briefing.

Yeah.

The Welsh First Minister would come next, that perhaps there'd be ministerial resignations,

that perhaps the mayors, Labour mayors, would come and put statements out. And it seemed like

Starm was in a real danger zone. And there was a mood in Westminster in Parliament. It reminded me

of covering some of the recent Tory governments we've had. That sense of chaos, that sense

that the PM wasn't really in control. So Monday was an extraordinary day since then. I mean, things have calmed down

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