Purnell goes – and rolls back the political sardine tin lid

Crumbs! An act of personal political courage – or of scheming personal political advancement? At this point almost impossible to judge.

I don’t know James Purnell well. He was once a pivotal bag carrier, speech writer and muse inside Tony Blair’s Downing Street. Hence a Blairite, almost certainly well aware of, and wary of, Gordon Brown’s shortcomings.

His resignation rolls back the lid of the entire political sardine tin. This is regicide by man who has, according to his friends, seen himself as a potential challenger for leadership.

He is a man whose career is one of acronyms – IPPR, BBC and MP. He was head of corporate planning at the BBC and generally thought to have been an efficient minister.

It was thought that his “rising star” status made him unsackable. So this now means that of the main cabinet expenses miscreants only Geoff Hoon is left – and what are his chances of avoiding the chop?

So, curiously, one piece of good news: Brown can now cleanse his Cabinet and ministerial ranks of the worst of the expenses abusers. But that’s the one crumb of comfort.

Brown has lost the power to appoint the chancellor of the exchequer of his choice (Ed Balls) and the foreign secretary of his choice (Mandelson?), and is now scurrying around looking for stuffing to replace the ship jumpers.

Just a hint of the dark arts that the Brown camp deploy in the darkest of hours: the hounding of Barry Sheerman MP, who had the temerity to ask for a secret ballot of all Labour MPs on Brown’s leadership.

His constituency chairman was called to deal with him, and others were also called with a view to his potential deselection. McBride may have gone but his art lives on.

If one thing eventually fells Gordon Brown it will not be his undoubted political capacities, but the paranoid operatives he encourages to function around him.