Gordon Brown is falling down, falling down

Only the day after the UK vote in the European elections, expectation is rampant that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is on the verge of resigning. With his Labour party standing to come a disastrous third in the number of seats won for the Strasbourg parliament, in addition to a hammering in local elections taking place at the same time, the resignation of four cabinet ministers in recent days is looking fatal. The latest to quit, welfare secretary James Purnell, has added insult to injury by publishing an open letter inviting him to “stand aside”. Writing in The Guardian, Polly Toynbee, columnist and former staunch ally, evokes “a half-killed prime minister staggering along with knives in his back. “...the leader cannot stay,” sighs the left wing daily’s editorial. Meanwhile, the beleaguered Brown has sought to salvage what remains of his crumbling premiership with an impromptu cabinet reshuffle, only to receive resignations of Defence secretary, John Hutton, and now, Transport secretary, Geoff Hoon, The Guardian reports.