"Walking wounded"
Another day, another defeat for the government? We'll know this afternoon when the Commons votes on a series of measures to , 
hard on the heels of the yesterday.
Government whips said, after they'd lost a vote attacking restrictions on the Gurkhas' right to settle in Britain, that the defeat had taken them completely unawares. Perhaps if they'd been watching yesterday's Daily Politics they might not have been so surprised.
Victory or defeat over expenses is much less clear cut. Frankly, the situation is so complicated and messy that I have no idea how things will pan out in the various votes today. We know that Gordon Brown has already had to drop his short-lived proposal to pay MPs an attendance allowance in place of their second homes allowance. But the shape of any new expenses regime remains a bit of a mystery.
Defeat over the Gurkhas, a climbdown over expenses, a ridiculed appearance on YouTube and an unpopular Budget means the media is full of talk of the Prime Minister having "lost his authority" (Example: "GB struggling to maintain his authority" -- 1st sentence in splash in today's Times). Centre-left Independent commentator John Rentoul goes further and says it's "all over" for the PM, but Mr Rentoul has been out of sorts with Mr Brown for some time.
Nevertheless the consensus on the Left and Right in Westminster is to see Mr Brown as a diminished figure, with nobody clear on when things might pick up for him again.
My guess is he will continue, walking wounded, for the foreseeable future, even through bad local and election results in June. Comparisons with Tory John Major's own "walking wounded" performance in the mid-90s, however, are growing ever more loud, which is never comforting for a PM, since Mr Major lost by a landslide.
One final thought this morning: international health authorities grow ever more closer to naming so called swine flu -- and much of the media, which never says no to a drama, loves it. But it was only four years ago that the World Health Organisation told us that Asian bird flu would kill 150m worldwide -- and the actual death toll was 200, over several years.
True, people are dying in Mexico and that remains something of a mystery, though we cannot be sure all those in the statistics did die of swine flu. Elsewhere swine flu seems a somewhat minor ailment and so far nobody in Britain is suffering critically from it.
Outside Mexico, there are reports that a child has died of it in America, after a family holiday in Mexico, which would add to the unfolding Mexican tragedy. But what is happening so far should be seen in context: regular flu causes over 36,000 American deaths every year.
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