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Jack Straw is extremely upset with my ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ colleague Nick Robinson today for his report last night in which he named the justice secretary as one of six Cabinet members whom the rebel leaders had been hoping might resign in response to their operation.

Mr Straw today described Nick's report last night as a "very sub-standard piece of journalism".

But Nick didn't actually say that he himself saw Mr Straw as a potential rebel. He merely suggested that sources close to yesterday's coup-leaders thought Mr Straw might quit.

Nick stressed that the coup-leaders had no contact with any of the six Cabinet members.

Mr Straw, of course, ran Gordon Brown's successful leadership campaign back in 2007, but it's no secret in politics that he's been worried at the way things have gone since then.

Indeed I was told by a senior government figure in 2008 that Mr Straw and Geoff Hoon - who was then Brown's chief whip - had a series of agonised meetings in the summer of 2008 to discuss the problem of Mr Brown's disappointing performance as leader.

These discussions came to nothing, it seems.

Pro-Brown figures yesterday were quick to paint Mr Hoon as something of a serial plotter, and not just against the current prime minister.

They accused Mr Hoon of involvement in two attempted coups against Tony Blair in 2006, the year when Blair demoted Mr Hoon from the Cabinet (where he'd spent six years, as defence secretary and then leader of the House).

Mr Hoon's hands "were not untainted," one of the leaders of the successful September 2006 coup told me.

When I put these suggestions to Mr Hoon yesterday, however, he firmly denied it.

But another leading government source says that Mr Brown was so grateful for Mr Hoon's assistance in the 2006 operation that it explains why he rewarded him with promotion to chief whip when Mr Brown took over as prime minister.