KEY POINTS:
It is John Key's birthday tomorrow. It is fast becoming one he will want to forget.
There was a cake from National Party colleagues at yesterday morning's caucus meeting. Labour delivered its present in Parliament in the afternoon.
Some present. Mr Key was the victim of a savage, planned Labour offensive on his credibility and his judgment, the likes of which has not been witnessed for quite some time.
Call it a drubbing, a thrashing, a trouncing or a hiding, National's leader was on the wrong end of it.
Not only was his honeymoon over. It must have felt like the post-birthday hangover had kicked in early.
Rather than bouncing from cloud to cloud, Mr Key found himself being dragged by Labour through the complete catalogue of his errors, gaffes, faux pas and, above all, his inconsistencies.
It is not a very big catalogue. But the inconsistent statements and shift in positions have been on the rise. And Labour ministers made the most of what was on offer. They variously lampooned and ridiculed Mr Key over conflicting statements he had made about sending troops to Iraq, National's on-off backing of the possible compromise on the transtasman joint therapeutics agency, the future of State Services Commissioner Mark Prebble and his intention to make it easier for people to buy their first home.
The onslaught was sustained. It was merciless. State Services Minister Annette King had her colleagues in stitches as she recited Mr Key's varying positions on backing the therapeutics agency compromise. "He said he would and he could. Then later he said he couldn't and he wouldn't. And later still he said he couldn't because he wouldn't. And finally he said he didn't because he hadn't."
And, rubbing salt into the wounds, Mrs King brought up Mr Key's slip at last weekend's National Party conference where Mr Key talked of leading a "Labour" Government.
"If this House is confused, I have to tell you [it's] nowhere near as confused as the Leader of the Opposition," Mrs King concluded amidst colleagues hooting with laughter.
Labour's blitz was evidence of the very warning Mr Key had given to last weekend's National Party conference - extracting Labour from the Beehive was going to be like dealing with a cornered animal.
Finding himself cornered, however, Mr Key did not seem quite sure what to do.
Such was the provocation, at one point he appeared to want to get to his feet and respond in kind with a point of order or supplementary question. But neighbouring colleagues advised otherwise, knowing that joining in the fight was exactly what Labour was hoping he would do.
The trouble was the onslaught just kept on coming.
National's Gerry Brownlee finally broke ranks by querying whether Defence Minister Phil Goff might advise the House of National's position on the Crimean War of the 1850s, given what Mr Key might have said about committing troops to Iraq back in 2003 was ancient history in 2007.
Mr Brownlee's reference to the Crimean War may have been more apt than he intended, however.
Like the ill-fated Light Brigade, Mr Key found himself in his own Valley of Death.
"It is magnificent, but it's not war," a French general famously declared of the 1854 cavalry charge.
Yesterday, National and its leader were a long way off magnificent. But for Labour, it's war, most definitely.
