Gorden Brown is fighting for his political life. Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell not only resigned this week but called on Brown to step down too. His Friday reshuffle of the cabinet is buying him a little time. But chins are wagging that his resignation could be next.

Some call him “the smooth assassin,” others a man of honor. There’s some truth to both. With his resignation, Britain’s 39-year-old Work and Pensioners Secretary James Purnell has delivered his boss Gordon Brown a further stab in the back. And this one could prove fatal.

The Labour Party is watching a “half killed Prime Minister staggering along with knives in his back,” as Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee mercilessly put it. In the celebratory words of the Sun: “Finally a cabinet minister has said what the rest of them are thinking.” And the London Timespraised Purnell who, “in this single act,” has become “one of the most significant of the talented Labour politicians of his generation.” From now on, “he will always be the man who dared.”

Purnell is the third minister to step down from Brown’s government in the last three days. Before him were interior minister Jacqui Smith and communities minister Hazel Blears. Unlike the two women, who were both bound up in the expenses scandal, Purnell was not on Brown’s hit list. That makes his resignation all the more dangerous for Brown, who can no longer claim the expenses scandal is the sole reason for the exodus of ministers. He is now forced to admit that his power is under attack.   MORE>>>

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