I'm Hugo Rifkind.

Now, Charles Brandreth is not only one of Britain's breast-known broadcasters.

He also served as a government whip under John Major during one of the most turbulent periods of covert conservative infighting.

He's also met every Prime Minister since Winston Churchill.

Ahead of his appearance at the Fleet Street Quarter Festival of Words,

I spoke to him about the pressure facing Keir Stama, and I asked how it compares with previous attempts to unseat a prime minister.

Well, it's quite interesting. The difference between what's happening to Kirstama, what happened

to Margaret Thatcher, is she had already had 10 extraordinary years and had election success after election success, whereas Kirstama did have

one tremendous election success and then somehow it all seemed to go wrong with decisions

that many people felt were the wrong decisions, and there were U-turns and didn't seem to

sort of connect with the hearts of people or even with the minds of people. But so there are echoes.

And I do know how painful it is. Of course, with Mason's actually, it was different because she

was this big international figure. In fact, in fairness to Kirstama, he is in the view of most

people, done quite well on the international stage.

But I feel this has more echoes of when people stood up against John Major.

And I remember, because I was a government whip at the time,

I do remember there were a lot of people

who really liked John Major,

as there were a lot of people who really like Kirstama as a person

and who felt actually this is pretty rough, this is tough. And I do remember the day that John Major

and then put him in, just chose when there were rumblings against him and there were stalking

horses. He chose to actually say, put up or shut up. He stepped down

...