Smash hit

Darling was on his way out anyway, due to be sacked in the reshuffle at the end of the week and to be replaced as chancellor by Ed Balls. Darling had told Brown that if he was not going to be chancellor then he would return to the back benches. Balls, the schools secretary, was, according to advisers, busy packing up his office ready for the move to No 11.

Brown obviously felt on top of things. His aides let it be known he had found time to call Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan, judges on the television show Britain’s Got Talent, to inquire after the health of Susan Boyle. The Scottish singer had been admitted to the Priory mental health clinic the night before and Brown wanted to know how she was because she was “really nice”.

Such attempts at soft-soap populism were out of the window by Tuesday morning, however.

Cabinet ministers will routinely tell the prime minister if they have had enough of their jobs and do not want to be considered for a new role in a forthcoming reshuffle. Rarely do they make their intentions public before the event.

Last Tuesday was different. First Jacqui Smith confirmed that she was resigning as home secretary, becoming the first cabinet casualty of the scandal over House of Commons allowances. She had become a subject of ridicule when it was revealed that her husband had claimed for the cost of two pornographic films. Smith was almost in tears during her final stint at the dispatch box that afternoon.

Next came the departure of Beverley Hughes, the children’s minister. Family reasons was the official excuse. Friends say that Hughes wanted to spend more time looking after her ageing mother.

However, the same allies also say that after a decade off and on in government she had become “bored, frustrated and could not see a reason to continue in ministerial office”. In history there have been many reasons for ministers to quit their posts; only in Brown’s lame duck government do they complain of ennui.

Tom Watson, the Cabinet Office minister and key No 10 enforcer, also resigned on Tuesday. He had become caught up in the Damian McBride e-mails scandal when it was claimed — wrongly — that he had been copied into the smear memos which attacked prominent Tories. He successfully sued over the allegations but the ordeal stripped him of the appetite for ministerial life. Like Hughes, he had become exhausted by government.

The final straw, say friends, was when he himself became the victim of a dirty trick. It is understood his wife caught intruders who broke into his garage trying to get away with the contents of his bins.

To lose three ministers in a day looks careless, but their resignations did not have a decisive impact because they all expressed their loyalty to the prime minister. Far worse was to come.

From the moment Brown had publicly labelled her expenses claims as “totally unacceptable” more than two weeks ago, Blears had begun contemplating the “nuclear option”.

She had been clinging to the hope that Brown might spare her in his looming reshuffle, despite her now notorious “YouTube if you want to” jibe and the avalanche of claims about her abusing her expenses. Given the number of times she had gamely taken to the airwaves to defend him when he was in a hole, she had concluded that he owed her. Now he had publicly humiliated her, leaving no doubt about her fate.

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