Jack Straw, off for America, almost made it -- instructing his friends to say that he still supported the PM but clearly not keen to say so himself in so many words.
But he was finally reined in on Sunday, adding his views about Gordon's competence in hard times to just about everyone else's. And it's still probably the case that there isn't a majority in the cabinet or among Labour MPs as a whole to dump Gordon Brown.
Of course if he decided to resign they'd be overjoyed, not least because it would offer prospects of career advancement (however fleeting) to more than it would disappoint. But he isn't going to go willingly and getting rid of him would be a messy process.
The media, almost to a man, has decided that Brown is toast and it's just a matter of when the men in grey suits pay their visit. The one dissenter, by the way, is the Daily Mail's Paul Dacre, who admires Brown despite his various cock-ups, and who has been quite solid recently.
Brown will hang on, unless someone makes him chancellor of the world, and it's not unknown for the men in grey suits to be sent away with a flea in their ear. Apparently there were two such delegations to former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and he told them to get lost (I know he went in the end).
When Churchill was prime minister for the second time in the 1950s numerous Tory bigwigs tried to get him to step down in favour of Anthony Eden and he declined (or said he couldn't hear them).
Labour has never unseated a leader mid term. The analogy everyone's using is Margaret Thatcher but in her case there was a clear, named opponent in one Michael Heseltine, who had left the cabinet in the row over Westland. With Labour it's more like Caesar setting off for the forum amid shouts of "after you Brutus, no after you Cassius".
Without a clear public challenger Brown can probably hang on. So the media are getting ahead of themselves a bit. It does at least create a window for the likes of Stephen Carter and David Muir, his expensive spin doctoring wizards, to spruce up his performance a bit.
As Chancellor, Brown succeeded in battering his opponents into submission with his big clunking fist. Wheel out the latest tractor production figures and shout a lot, and that would just about do it.
But that was because he only had to perform now and then. As PM you've got to perform a lot and I bet that just about everybody in the country is up to here with continued references to hard-working families, their merits and their travails.
What if you're just part of a muddling through type family, or a bone idle family, or not a spouse and parent at all? Which is actually most of us. Are we to be left hanging out to dry?
Unless Brown can change his language (which probably means his thinking) then he really is toast -- and most of the Labour Party with him.