Slow but engrossing, that was the Westminster day. For long spells, as in chess, nothing much seemed to happen; and yet everything was happening. Quite exciting by the end, too.

With the King back in his place, was Wes Streeting going to move? Did he have enough pawns? Might the (nasal) knight be taken?

Overnight headlines said Mr Streeting and Ed Miliband could fight to replace Sir Keir Starmer. Dawn came and went. We reporters combed our inboxes for a Campaign Streeting ‘op note’ about a launch event. None came. Was Mr Streeting waiting for NHS waiting list figures to be published? Or was he struggling to secure the public support of 81 Labour MPs?

A gambit from the red queen: Angela Rayner, gussied up like a wide-eyed innocent, was given a soft-furnishings interview by ITV’s Paul Brand (facilitator to the stars) to proclaim her fiscal innocence.

Ms Rayner had been ‘cleared by Haitch MRC’ over that business of her property taxes. Mind you, she still had to cough up 40,000 smackeroos. If that’s a clearance, I’m Boris Spassky.

Still no word from Wes. Andy Burnham was not even on the board. Could he find an MP with a safeish northern English seat to commit seppuku?

The Commons opened at 9.30am and the chamber was near empty. Everyone else was in Portcullis House, the newish building beyond Big Ben. Under its glass-roofed atrium, the scene was worthy of an airport during flight delays. All we needed were a few ‘bing bong’ Tannoy announcements from easyJet.

Parliamentarians and inky reptiles lounged about, drinking coffee from plastic cups, swapping rumours.

Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer strode by with a mobile held to his ear. No one was convinced there was anyone on the line. Hamish probably just wanted to look busy and avoid questions from reporters.

Barry Gardiner (Lab, Brent N) reminisced about his school days. He was head boy at Haileybury and once climbed the chapel roof.

Hours passed. The Commons trundled through its business. Attendance remained minimal.

By now the chatter was that Cabinet ministers, perhaps even Rachel Reeves, whose support for Sir Keir in recent days has been on mute, were preparing to see the PM one by one to urge him to concede. A delusional No10 chuckled that it had pushed Mr Streeting into a position where he would have to initiate a contest (‘trigger the Prime Minister’, as Ms Rayner put it with her usual felicity).

A chess-playing friend told me of an adage in the game: ‘The blunders are there, just waiting to be made.’

Mr Streeting was determined not to blunder into provoking a leadership election. His people insisted he ‘had the numbers’ but Sir Keir’s people scoffed. They thought – this is not a chess expression – they had his knackers in a wrench.

Light entertainment came with news that Al Carns, blunt-witted junior defence minister and sometime Royal Marine, fancied his chances. Camp Carns signalled: ‘If someone fires the starting gun he isn’t afraid of gunfire.’ Sgt Bilko would be a runner. If we had a race.

At 12.59pm, Wes’s resignation dropped.

Two pages long, topped and tailed in a hand not unlike that of the late Princess Diana. A minute later, Westminster’s skies darkened. A thunderstorm. Such auguries normally only happen in Scooby-Doo cartoons.

No10’s grandmasters may have felt a touch less superior when they read Mr Streeting’s suggestion that the contest be delayed until Brother Burnham had his pieces in order. Had Streeting and Burnham made an anti-Starmer pact?

Then came another blow to the PM. At 5.15pm, posh Josh Simons vacated his Makerfield seat. He did it with much self-polishing about ‘putting the country first’. Oh, please. His Commons career went phutt in a recent scandal. A blow-in blew up and has now blown out.

To close, another chess saying: ‘A knight on the rim is dim.’ I am not entirely sure what it means but it sounds suitable for poor Sir Keir.