"So can it get any worse?" for Gordon Brown asked the Daily Mail's front page this morning. After this week's prime minister's questions, it probably just has.
David Cameron was predictably damning about the latest funding scandal to hit the Labour Party. However the chink in his armour on this issue is the Conservatives' own less than pristine reputation on party funding, summed up by vocal Labour MPs as a reliance on Lord Ashcroft's credit card.
Dealt a disastrous hand yet again, for as many weeks as it is now possible to remember he has come into PMQs on the backfoot, Brown did his best and tried in vain to take the attack to the Tories. However it was hard work from the off.
Cameron went straight for the jugular. Only months ago Brown had promised "honest government... an end to spin, to restore trust and deliver competence", he noted, hardly in evidence in the past two days as Labour admitted to taking improper donations.
"That is why I acted immediately," Brown insisted, in deciding to repay the cash and establish inquiries into what went wrong. His own strategy soon became clear when he added that "all of us have an interest in introducing integrity" in party funding, essentially translating as 'they think we're all as bad as each other'.
But the Tory leader had no intention of holding back. Brown had admitted that Labour broke the law, so had he invited the police to investigate, he asked.
That was a matter for the Electoral Commission, the prime minister replied, before trying again with his attempt to damn the Tories too. It is "in the interests of the whole of public life" to clean the system up he said. This time he was accompanied by a huge chorus of cries of "Ashcroft" from the Labour benches.
Brown was "just wriggling", Cameron came back, although he could hardly be heard amid the noise. As is often the case it was the 'beast of Bolsover', Dennis Skinner, who was singled out by the Speaker.
Then Cameron brought up the case of Labour's chief fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn. What did he know?
Brown was standing by his man. Mendelsohn only took up the post in September, with the indirect donations having been coming in for four years before that.
Cameron claimed the prime minister's explanation that Mendelsohn knew but did nothing "beggars belief". His government had been nothing more than 155 days of "disaster after disaster" characterised by "incompetence and complacency" and now "questions about his integrity".
Then came the pay off: "Are not people rightly asking, 'Is this man simply not cut out for the job?'".
Cornered, Brown could only think of falling back on his record. "Our party brought in measures" to clean up party funding, he reminded MPs (although whether it makes breaching them any better or worse is a moot point).
"As for competence," he continued. "I remind him that in 1992..." the rest of the answer was drowned out in the chamber by a wave of noise. But it is safe to assume that it contained references to Cameron's time as a Treasury adviser, Black Wednesday, boom and bust, Bank of England independence and 10 years of economic growth and stability.
A clear victory for Cameron then but once again it was upstaged by a brilliant intervention from the acting Liberal Democrat leader.
Vince Cable's performances in recent weeks have earned him a respect that means he was afforded a brief moment of silence by Labour and Conservative MPs, who always denied his predecessors this privilege and will no doubt withdraw it again whenever his successor is elected.
But in that space Cable delivered a devastating put down - that Brown had completed a "remarkable transformation from Stalin to Mr Bean". It was said with a smile on his face. Yet coming from someone he is known to be friendly with it must have hurt the prime minister even more.
Unlike Rowan Atkinson or Tony Blair, Brown has little capacity for self-deprecation or an off-the-cuff aside and so struggled to move on.
In fact the only time a smile appeared on his face was when Sir Patrick Cormack bizarrely asked him what he would like for Christmas. "One day off," was the reply. Someone should buy him an advent calendar to count down the days.
The verdict:
Brown: 6/10 - Defended well but attack didn't take off
Cameron: 8/10 - Effective soundbites for the six o'clock news
Cable: 9/10 - Pressure free, he excels every week
