It's a good analogy, history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. This is not simply Brown's DownFall,this is NuLabour's Pratfall. There are times in a government's life when they seem charmed, whatever happens doesn't seem to matter in the polls. Mistakes can be made, Ministers can talk out of turn or even go completely barking insane. No matter, the gods remain kind and all will be well. And then, one day, semingly without warning but always with good reason, the mood changes and anything the government does turn to ashes in their hands.

Yet politicians still believe they can appease the gods with sacrifice, McMillan (UK Prime minister '57 - 63) once famously sacked nearly his entire cabinet to try to bolster popularity, but still lost the election. Labour disposed of Tony Blair and, for a short while believed they had shed their bad luck. But these gods are not bought cheaply and their wrath is not lightly dispensed. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. And nothing eats at your sanity like hope. So the polls rose, they even imagined they might run to the country for a snap election in 2007. And the gods gloated as finally an ocean of hubris began to pour on the Labour landscape.

So here we are, in a week where, for some reason, Gordon Brown decided to make a complete fool of himself on YouTube last week. Apparently it is claimed to have been deliberately amateurish, as all YouTube videos are. As Andrew Rawnsley described it;-
 

that gurning appearance on YouTube, now a worldwide comedy sensation. I guess he did it from a vague notion that it would make him look like he had the popular touch. It had the reverse effect. The prime minister's lunatic rictus was more disturbing than Jack Nicholson in The Shining

Whatever occasioned this madness, it is now been widely determined to have been a mistake,  I expected to find the video trailed as "satire brought to you by the conservative party on behalf of david Cameron", but no, this was an official labour party disaster of their own making.

Now, laughably, first Hazel Blears says this was a mistake

YouTube if you want to. But it's no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre

Then, she was got at overnight and has now released a statement sayng that she's shocked and horrified that anybody could have interpreted what she said as an attack on gordon Brown, full confidence, best man for the job .. blah blah.

Jackie ashley described the problem best in the Guardian

This is why, finally, the McBride killer emails story was not trivial. The nastiness and cynicism reflected a part of the Brown attack machine that he has been unable to abjure. The chain of mistakes would be bad luck, a rough old week in politics, were they not connected by a refusal to take advice, and by the out-of-touch tactics of a puffed-up little cabal. I will go to my grave still arguing that Brown has good qualities, a bigness of political vision; but these government-destroying flaws are his too.
So now, with at most a year to go before a general election, Labour is falling apart. MPs of all parties are notorious panickers, but this time panic is the rational response. If the party gets the kind of historic shredding the polls suggest then all bets are off.

Now the full bizarre nature of Brown's flawed character, once merely hinted at, is being examined in grotesque detail

Unnamed ministers are quoted as saying that Gordon Brown is "lashing out" at people and looking for someone to blame for the debacles of recent weeks. There are stories of rages and of flying office equipment. We all saw the prime minister so dazed with tiredness in parliament the other day that he didn't know whether he was coming or going. And he says, "I don't regret anything I've done".

Is there really any saving grace for them ? Haven't they done good things with social policy ? Yes, they have, but these have been largely inconsequential figleaves to cover up other far more important monstrosities. The Iraq war front and centre, but also the degrading abasement of the City.

This last to the extent that when the Chancellor tried to refill the Treasury by putting up taxes on the top 1% of earners to 50%, the criticism from within Blairite ranks was that this measure would chase away high achievers and reduce rather than increase revenues. You would expect this Laffer curve, Randian drivel of the rich going on strike and migrating abroad from the Conservatives and their press friends.
That it came from some in the Labour Cabinet shows how necessary it is that a firehose is employed to clean out the mess into which the labour party has descended.

There is already one party for the rich, the UK does not need two. The UK will suffer under the Tories and I'm not sure how healthily we might emerge afterward. But this may well be countered by the leftish tendencies of the US so maybe not much harm could be done. But the country needs a labour party committed to justice for the people, a period in the wilderness may allow them to re-discover their instincts.