Bunkered Brown has escaped from his Big Brother House leaving a trail of chaos in his wake. Leadership challenges and election slaughters are playing second fiddle as the ex-Supreme Leader rearranges the few deck chairs left on the sinking ship and the stuffing is knocked out of his waning authority. Left in limbo land with a collapsing compromise cabinet, it's all hands to the Downing Street pumps.
Away from the over-active spinning, one thing is certain. This is not the cabinet reshuffle Team Brown wanted or planned for.
Blairite Party greybeard, transport secretary and expenses fiddler, 'three homes' Hoon, is the latest to quit.
A prime minister is being held hostage by his own cabinet. The piper is no longer calling the tune, despite the Downing Street spinning 'lines to take', revealed here by the Guardian, trying to fool some of the people some of the time.
The Orange Party asked on Monday if the Party could wait until Friday. The answer came back loud and clear - no way. The knife has been wielded, the challenge is now real. The die is cast.
At the stroke of Number 10, Blair-boy Purnell dropped his bombshell and spectacularly stuck the knife in, urging Brown to go, the first direct challenge from a cabinet minister to his leadership. At a stroke he pushed the impending New Labour wipe-out in the English shires onto the back burner.
How on earth could you have a guy up to his neck in MPs' expenses fiddles in charge of catching benefit cheats? But unlike fiddlers iffy Smiffy and bleating Blears his resignation came uncoded with the full force of a direct challenge to Brown.
Beleaguered Brown won't stand down. Power will have to be prised from his cold dead fingers. Without a home secretary, communities secretary, work and pensions secretary and defence secretary, Brown's last throw of the dice was to salvage something from his fag-end government with a damp squib reshuffle to capture the news agenda.
Dogged by record poor poll ratings, facing disaster in the elections and a very real political coup, trying to win back authority over a rebellious Party was the last throw of the dice. But instead of a radical reshuffle for born-again-Brown, it's the last gasp of a dead duck.
Serial flipper Darling refused to budge, despite Saint Vince calling for his head.
Defence secretary Hutton quit the cabinet, putting loyalty to Purnell and the Blairite cause above any loyalty to the PM.
He who wields the dagger never wears the crown, so both Johnson and Miliband are staying schtum for the moment.
But Johnson has shown his true colours. A turn-coat and Blair prop, reviled by the grass-roots Party but revered as a so-called 'working-class hero' by the Guardianistas, he's lumped with the poisoned home office chalice taking the Brown shilling from the hand of a fallen and discredited leader.
In the end Brown didn’t have the balls to make Balls chancellor. That will cause dismay among Balls' City spivs but bring relief to the parliamentary Party and the country.
With wife Yvette off to DWP, the Balls-Cooper partnership is now firmly entrenched in the top echelons of government. The first time a couple of triple homes flippers have got their feet under the cabinet table.
Despite the best efforts of the Downing Street spin machine, the Orange Party isn't going to take the total wipe-out unfolding in the English local elections lying down. Even a New Labour spinner would be hard pressed to find some crumbs of comfort.
Four English shires are set to put two fingers up to New Labour and boot them out of local government in a modern day Lords Of The Rings:
Despised New Labour Orcs are being driven out of the Shires in the battle for Middle Earth and Gordon the Brown is left licking his wounds. Now all eyes turn east to the Land of Backdoor to halt the rise of the evil EU empire. The Dark Lord took his eye off the ball, leaving Dave the White to lead the fight and clean up the moats and votes.
As the Orange Party has pointed out throughout this hectic week, the seeds were sown by the parliamentary Labour Party showing increasing anger and frustration at Brown's dismissive and autocratic style.
Moves to oust Brown are still very much alive. Senior backbench loyalist, Barry Sheerman, not known for plotting and boat-rocking wants a secret ballot of New Labour MPs to test the Brown water.
PoliticsHome has an indispensable tally of politicians who've quit, taken sides or haven't yet come out the woodwork. Brown seems safe enough for the moment but he's a broken man heading up a dismal government.
Between now and the expected Euro massacre results on Sunday into Monday anything, quite literally, could happen. And with a collapsed government it very often does.
But it's not all doom and gloom in Brown's Big Brother House. Billy no mates Brown goes off to the Normandy beaches for a photo-shoot with his new found pal Obama while making sure Her Maj doesn't get a look in.
The head of state should dissolve parliament while broken and busted Brown is on the road to nowhere.
