The old survivor battles on, not waving but limping. Gordon Brown has a cabinet, but the party remains in the depths of a nervous breakdown. His myrmidons sniff out plotters, arm-twisting local party chairmen, calling suspects in the middle of the night. Clutching for stardust with Alan Sugar as enterprise tsar, it's as if the prime minister no longer knows the difference between a fantasy television programme and the real world. Is this "reality" government? A slap of real voting in the council results ought to shake them to their senses.
But no one is quite sure what is real, what is rumour or how to judge ministerial words of loyalty spoken between gritted teeth. The display of cabinet solidity may not be all it seems: many know full well that their leader is an almost unmitigated electoral liability. If final results are bad enough tomorrow night, if Barry Sheerman and Clive Soley's stand is followed by a phalanx of senior backbenchers calling for Brown's head, the calculation among a crucial cabinet group may shift. By Tuesday, a queue may yet form outside the prime minister's office to tell him to his face that his time is up, just as one by one her cabinet did to Margaret Thatcher. Some reckoned Purnell's public resignation did maximum damage without unseating the leader: the quiet word behind closed doors can be more lethal.
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