Things must be looking pretty grim for Brown when even Polly Toynbee openly despairs

In free fall without a parachute, unassisted suicide, accelerating the wrong way down a motorway – the death metaphors are flowing in a dark torrent of despair from Labour MPs. What made Gordon Brown hurl himself on that row of Gurkha kukri knives? Drowning at 19% behind in the latest polls, few think the party will come up for air a third time. That YouTube *grinning death's head is now a worldwide comic hit, while in the flesh the man looks more battered and hunted with each passing day. He suffers from tone *deafness to everything. ..
Slightly corny perhaps, but a better metaphor for Brown might be the once mighty battleship Bismarck, attacked by feeble World War 1 biplanes, torpedoed below the waterline, and now sailing round in circles rudderless and helpless while enemy ships assemble and start firing salvo after salvo ..

But a flaw of that comparison is that Bismarck was supremely fit for its purpose before being trapped, whereas McDoom was only ever any good at blowing other peoples' money.