Breaking news at breakneck speed –
but no singing female obesity just yet.

The vicar at Gordon Brown’s Kirkcaldy church said a prayer for him this morning. Seven hours later, the Nation still doesn’t know whether it was a prayer for his success or his soul. Either way, the Prime Minister got on a plane soon afterwards, and zoomed south for his rendezvous with destiny in Whitehall.

At about the time GB was due to land somewhere or another, everyone important began to leave home. Cameras watched as first Cleggover and then the Cameroon closed front doors and got into limos.

Those deciding Gordon’s destiny were not as yet ready to tell him he was dead, and so he flounced over to the Foreign Office, where (Sky hacks tried to suggest) he had a secret meeting – and perhaps shared a deep-fried Mars Bar Pizza – with Man of the Hour Nick Clegg. Wearing a flak jacket and heavy-duty UXB helmet, Clegg may or may not have had the temerity to himself suggest that Brown was indeed a corpse: we don’t know.

Not knowing has been very much the order of service this weekend; but such wiseassed comments aside, Sky gave more excitement and pace to events than everyone else put together. As is the Digger’s way, this was good telly, but minimalist in its real analysis of what the bejesus was going on.

On all channels, the word of the day on Sunday varied, but ‘break’ was the most common syllable. Were the talks about to break for lunch, break up in confusion, break out into breakthrough clean-break territory, or break down in a Dacre Mail-style shambles? We didn’t know.

As I write, we still don’t. Despite Adam Boulton’s mounting tumescence, William Hague emerged (why is it that people only ever emerge from negotiations as if from a bathyscape?) to promise something or other in the next 24 hours. The LibDem team announced shortly afterwards that they’d had a good afternoon, and now they were off to confer with some other people or other.

For real people, the good news is that Brown is no more: his feet may be nailed to the perch, but he is dead. The bad news is that Mandelson lives on – as do Campbell, Balls, the Milibands, Charlie Whelan, Harriet Harman and the rest of the walking, talking mentally wounded folks formerly known as the Government. They plot still, hopeful that Lord Peter’s ‘joke’ review of LibDem economic plans (and the PM’s ‘don’t you fuck with me pipsqueak’ phone manner) haven’t burnt the entire anti-Conservative Armada of boats they’ve been trying to put in place since Friday morning.

However, the media seem to me a little previous in assuming the eventual massacre of the Labour shiterati. In case it escaped your attention, Willy Hague’s progress report was mainly significant for its lack of any breakthrough on the potential PR breakdown. He who laughs last is often called Lord Mandelson: it may take hours or weeks, but we are still a long way from the end of this power-handover process.