Andrew Murray, adviser and Unite chief, Worth boarding school; James Schneider, director of communications, Winchester and Oxford; Seumas Milne, director of strategy, Winchester and Oxford; John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, Great Yarmouth Grammar; Jeremy Corbyn, party leader, Castle House prep school and Adams’ Grammar

Tom Watson spent most of Friday playing Super Smash Bros, a Nintendo video game, with his 14-year-old son. It was only when he went for dinner that Labour’s deputy leader learnt he was the victim of a political super smash coup by some of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies to finish his career.

“I got a text message in a Chinese restaurant in Manchester to say that they were abolishing me,” he said yesterday.

That evening, as Labour prepared for a party conference where it will finalise its Brexit stance and general election platform, Jon Lansman — a veteran of the Bennite plot to oust Denis Healey as Labour’s deputy leader in 1981 — launched a similar attempt to defenestrate Watson, 52. As the party’s ruling