After losing six cabinet ministers in three days, Thursday's disastrous local elections and the prospect of a further debacle when the European election results are revealed on Sunday, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown now faces a concerted press onslaught. Here is a selection of comments in the British press.

Matthew Parris, writing in The Times, compares Gordon Brown to former Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko whose brief reign in the Kremlin (1984/5) was marked by chronic ill-health.
"Another sweating, stumbling shell of a political career, drained of power or genius, impelled and sustained only by anger and pride...This is pathetic. This is toe-curlingly awful. This is so abjectly, senselessly broken-backed that it almost isn't interesting to watch. I've seen poisoned rats die slowly, too, and after a while the spectacle loses the appeal even of the macabre."

Polly Toynbee, writing in The Guardian, a paper usually more sympathetic to the Labour party, rues the cabinet's cowardice for failing to act against Brown:
"If next year Labour suffers a meltdown with few survivors, forget calculations about which of the present runners and riders might step out of the wreckage to lead a future party. All those who this week failed to sound the alarm will have disqualified themselves. When sifting through the remnants and asking how this could have been avoided, what's left of the Labour party may rightly conclude that anyone now in the cabinet has proved themselves unfit for decisive leadership."

Tim Montgomerie, also writing in The Guardian, adds his voice to those lamenting Labour's reluctance to dispose of poor leaders.
"If Brown had been Conservative leader he would have been toppled by now. The Conservatives are ruthless in getting rid of unpopular leaders. Brown is much more unpopular than Margaret Thatcher, Iain Duncan Smith or John Major, but it now seems possible that he will survive."

Rightwing columnist Simon Heffer, writing in the Telegraph and a staunch critic of the 1990-1997 Major government, says that Brown's government is far more incompetent and ineffective than the last Conservative prime minister's.
"Watching an embalmed-looking and robotic-sounding Gordon Brown giving his press conference, one recognised one of the failings of our otherwise revered constitution: that it places no bar on a man who has taken leave of his senses still holding Her Majesty's commission as first minister. What is happening now makes John Major's government look like a triumph."

Simon Carr, in The Independent, reflects on insiders' gossip about Brown's notorious temper.
"At least he didn't throw his mobile phone at the reporters. He didn't heave a printer into the room and curse them. But he looked close to it. Seized with a passionate intensity, the PM was deep in the other half of his bi-polarity. Poor fellow was jabbering like a tobacco auctioneer."

Peter Oborne, writing in the Daily Mail, says that nervousness about the repercussions dissuaded Brown from constructing the new team he really wanted.
"He humiliatingly backed away at the last moment from constructing the Cabinet he wanted - out of fear that if he did so he would face an even greater wave of ministerial resignations that would wash away his premiership."