The rebel’s basic checklist is as follows: they need an absolutely minute knowledge of the party’s rulebook, yet at the same time, an understanding that the rule-based order is over. Item one in Labour lore used to be that, unlike the Conservatives, they found it more or less impossible to change the leader until he’d lost an election. If that was true even in opposition – which is where they normally are – it was so much truer while they were actually governing that it’s never really been worth examining other, lesser rules, such as “what’s the national executive committee (NEC) allowed to do again?”