JOHN Hutton, the fourth Labour Cabinet minister to quit in the past week, has left his post and will also quit as an MP, in order to write history, instead of trying to make it.
He is yet another demoralised Labour cabinet minister who has been overwhelmed by the task of rescuing capitalism from its crisis, by taking on the working class and the middle class to force them to pay for it.
His resignation came just hours after James Purnell stepped down as Work and Pensions Secretary, saying that Brown was the main obstacle to Labour winning the next election.
This out and out right winger made his name by making war on single parents, forcing them out to work and by removing their benefit if they refused.
His decision to resign was a direct attempt to force Brown out, following the earlier attempt by the just resigned Community Secretary Blears.
Ousting Brown would mean an unacceptable second unelected Prime Minister, and therefore an immediate general election and the return of the Tories to slash and burn the Welfare State. Purnell and Blears made clear by their action that this was their preferred course.
Jacqui Smith, another demoralised cabinet minister, earlier in the week, had made known her decision to resign as Home Secretary.
The response of Brown has been to reshuffle his cabinet bringing in virtually unknown politicians such as the new Defence Minister, Bob Ainsworth, to man the pumps of the sinking ship.
There will no doubt be other attempts to bring down the Brown regime by ex-ministers such as Charles Clarke.
The source of the crisis in the Labour government is the role that it has played in propping up the banks after the biggest financial and industrial collapse since 1931.
Brown has put hundreds of billions at the disposal of the banks and the government has engaged in a massive borrowing – £175 billion for this year alone.
Meanwhile unemployment is rocketing upward towards three million, the cost of living is rising and hundreds of thousands of workers are on short time working, while tens of thousands are having their homes repossessed.
Brown is to continue with these policies including privatising Royal Mail, and a huge clash with the mass of the working class and the middle class is absolutely inevitable.
It is this spectre that has create the explosive crisis in the Labour party leadership.
Meanwhile the ruling class wishes to advance to a new form of rule and has blasted great holes in the credibility of the parliamentary system by exposing the scandal of MPs expenses to the angry masses.
They are engaging in a purge of parliament and are building up a strong state to force the conditions of the 1930s onto the working class of the 21st century.
The ruling class considers that Brown has done all that he can for them and their banks, and that his regime must be replaced by a much stronger government which may well take the form of a national government between the Tories and the Purnell, Blears, Clarke wing of the Labour Party.
The Brown government is finished. The big question is whether it is to be brought down from the left or the right. Whether its place will be taken by a right-wing national government or whether it will be brought down by the working class through a general strike and make way for a workers government that will carry out socialist policies and bring in socialism.
Today the working class is boiling with anger. The task of the hour is the organisation of a general strike to bring down the Brown government and to put an end to capitalism by going forward to a workers government and socialism.
