Gordon Brown - dead PM walking (continued)...

Dear Gordon,

We both love the Labour Party. I have worked for it for 20 years and you for far longer. We know we owe it everything and it owes us nothing.

I owe it to our party to say what I believe no matter how hard that may be. I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more, not less likely.

That would be disastrous for our country. This moment calls for stronger regulation, an active state, better public services, an open democracy.

It calls for a government that measures itself by how it treats the poorest in society.

Those are our values, not David Cameron's.

We therefore owe it to our country to give it a real choice. We need to show that we are prepared to fight to be a credible government and have the courage to offer an alternative future.

I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning. As such I am resigning from government.

The party was here long before us, and we want it to be here long after we have gone. We must do the right thing by it.

I am not seeking the leadership, nor acting with anyone else. My actions are my own considered view, nothing more.

If the consensus is that you should continue, then I will support the government loyally from the backbenches. But I do believe that this question now needs to be put.

Thank you for giving me the privilege of serving.

Yours,

Rt Hon James Purnell MP

And so with these words, Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell plunges Gordon Brown's government deeper into chaos tonight, after quitting the cabinet and calling on the prime minister to step down.
Purnell becomes the third minister to leave Brown's Cabinet in recent days. The home secretary and communities secretary had already announced they were standing down from cabinet.
PM told to go as minister quits

What now for Gordon Brown and the Labour party?
James Purnell might well believe he's acting with the best intentions, but the British electorate will not vote for a party in crisis. Furthermore the British people will not tolerate another unelected Prime Minister.