Labour may desert PM to have chance

For weeks, the British parliamentary expenses scandal has carried a pungent whiff of farce.

The scale of grasping greed on display was such that a good dose of black humour was needed to process it.

There have been the pathetically piddling claims - lightbulbs, a box of matches, a toilet roll, tea lights and an ice cube tray.

Then there have been grand flourishes of privilege - the infamous moat-cleaning bill, the floating duck house and the servants' quarters.

But the serious side of this scandal has been steadily building into a major democratic and Cabinet crisis as the country still deals with the economic crunch.

Months of global attention this year on the excesses of Wall St, AIG and auto execs' penchant for jet travel - as ordinary workers felt the recession's blade - meant this particular leak of documents dropped on already poisoned ground.

On Wednesday, the woman whose expenses claim revelations really started the snowball rolling became the most senior ministerial casualty.

Newspapers reported that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, whose husband claimed on her behalf for a bath plug and two porn films, was to step down in an upcoming reshuffle.

The Daily Telegraph revealed that Smith designated her sister's second bedroom as her principal home while saying her five-bedroom constituency house where her husband and sons live was her second home - meaning she was able to claim for more than £100,000 of work on it.

Two junior ministers, Tom Watson and Beverley Hughes, also said they were quitting. Then yesterday, Communities Minister Hazel Blears resigned from the Cabinet, saying Labour had lost its connection with the public and pointedly refusing to back Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

So far, more than a dozen MPs have announced they will be standing down at the next election because of the Telegraph's expose.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is the biggest ministerial fish gasping for air after reported claims on more than one property at the same time and for designating four different properties as his "second" home in four years.

In the first few weeks, Brown tried to control the chaos with dry, comprehensive parliamentary reforms. But suddenly, as opinion polls show Labour taking most of the blame for the scandal, the crisis has spun into freefall.

Now he faces an expected Labour whiteout in today's local and European elections and mutinous MPs fearing the same punishment when a general election is called some time in the next 12 months.

His next challenge requires some tricky knife work in reshaping his depleted Cabinet. That is fast turning into the task of also avoiding the knife himself.

Darling and Foreign Secretary David Miliband are reportedly resisting any pressure to change jobs.

Since the chief danger to Brown is that his senior colleagues turn against him, the British media is mapping terse statements and leaks for smoke signals of the inner turmoil within Cabinet ranks.

The Guardian has openly agitated for Labour to dump Brown. "The truth is that there is no vision from him, no plan, no argument for the future and no support. Labour has a year left before an election; its current leader would waste it. It is time to cut him loose."

Until this week, Labour had appeared ready for Brown to lead the party into the next general election and as part of that strategy the Prime Minister had been resisting calls for an early poll. Labour's slim chances of sneaking another win rest on having time to resurrect its public ratings and for unseen events to swallow Conservative leader David Cameron.

As Brown heads to the D-Day commemorations in France this weekend his Cabinet colleagues will be ruminating on whether a change of course at this late stage could be enough to save them from almost inevitable defeat.