This morning’s headlines had me singing into my hairbrush:

“My my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and Brown will meet his destiny in quite a similar way…”

Faced with a whole legion of bother (MPs’ expenses, this week’s elections, constitutional and electoral reform and rumours of a leadership coup) the Prime Minister marches into a critical week:

2 Big Stories

And yet:
Cabinet revolt won’t force me out, declares Brown
Today’s Independent reports Brown’s determination to stay on as PM and speculates on his plans to reshuffle the Cabinet:

Labour MPs return to the Commons in a grim frame of mind today after the half-term break. Opinion polls and their own canvassing suggest they are in for their worst drubbing in any election for a generation.

But the Prime Minister delivered his answer in advance to any group of ministers who may be thinking of visiting him once the votes have been counted to plead with him to resign for the party’s sake. That answer is “No”.

This election should be about Europe, not MPs’ expenses
Also from the Independent:

Yet the British electorate is showing depressingly little interest in the European nature of these elections. The focus of the debate has been on Westminster, not Brussels.

It is true the British public has always had a tendency to use European elections to kick whichever party is in power in Westminster. European manifestos have never been closely studied documents.

But this year the tendency to vote out of protest is likely to be especially pronounced thanks to the public’s volcanic anger over the Westminster expenses scandal.

Good job, then, that the Indy points out:

It is the Liberal Democrats who have been the most consistently constructive British party on the European Union, a stance which has given their honest criticisms of Brussels’ shortcomings all the more credibility.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

As Lib Dems Surge To Second Place, Polls and Papers Say – Vote Lib Dem To Really Hurt Gordon Brown
Alex Wilcock compares the polls and their implications for Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the European Elections.

ICM Poll filtered through our rotten electoral system
Mark “Reckons” Thompson has a graphic translation of that ICM poll into actual seats:

Despite the fact that Labour is 3 percentage points below the Lib Dems, on these figures they can expect to get more than twice as many seats as them. TWICE AS MANY. So if this really happened, a quarter of those voting would vote Lib Dem and yet they would only get 11% of the seats. Whereas Labour would only get 22% of the vote but would get 28% of the seats.

Remember this the next time you see a senior Labour politician try to obfuscate the issues around electoral reform. the truth is that they don’t want it because there is massive partisan advantage built into the current system.

Sing along with me, Gordon: “I feel like I win when I lose…”