First up was the issue of the expenses of Members of Parliament. After several days of debate over where the acceptable level of expenditure lies for MPs (which currently includes second home allowances), Poor Gordon decided to nip the problem in the bud and announce his proposals on YouTube. The performance, which can only be described as spine-tingling, further exposed Poor Gordon’s devastating uneasiness in front of cameras and was roundly ridiculed in the media. “The prime minister's lunatic rictus was more disturbing than Jack Nicholson in The Shining”, the Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley pointed out with poorly-concealed schadenfreude.

Next up: parliamentary petulance. As if his ill-advised jaunt onto YouTube wasn’t enough, Poor Gordon then had to contend with a runaway Parliament; a legislative chamber with a mind of its own which refused to keep those pesky Gurkhas in their place. Much like Téa Leoni standing on the beach at the end of late-1990s shocker Deep Impact, Poor Gordon decided to face down the tsunami of public opinion and flatly oppose proposals allowing Gurkha veterans, Nepalese soldiers who fought bravely for the UK during many conflicts, to settle in the country. Riding on the back of a significant rebellion within his own Labour party, the Liberal Democrat motion passed by 267 to 241 votes. Poor Gordon’s vain hope that MPs would accept his excruciatingly unromantic explanation of the prohibitive costs happily fell on deaf ears.

To add swipe to strife, his community secretary Hazel Blears came out swinging on Sunday in a savage attack on Poor Gordon’s credentials. Blears – who does seem (excuse the phrase) a little bit mental – mourned Labour’s inability to connect with the voters in a stinging attack on our down-trodden PM. She wrote of the government’s “lamentable failure” to seem human (pow!), an incredulous and hostile public (wham!) and Poor Gordon’s “titanic battering” in recent weeks (ka-bosh!). Her new, eye-wateringly provocative catchphrase appears to be “YouTube if you want to”, in reference to Poor Gordon’s recent fling with new media, and has sent a flurry of Labour ministers scrambling to control the damage.

All this stands Labour in pretty poor stead in the run-up to the European Parliament elections next month. Those knife-twisting Tories are almost certain to come out on top, and few would be surprised if the Lib Dems beat Poor Gordon into third place. Steeled for this eventuality, the real fear among Labour strategists is that the thuggish British National Party, who have reaped the benefits of an increasingly alienated working class in recent years, make a strong showing in traditional Labour heartlands.

Will Poor Gordon be blamed for the electoral advances of a group of pitchfork-wielding neofascist nutters? Of course he will. But if he’s very lucky, that deadly disease from Mexico may become a global pandemic and provide him with a brief respite from the limelight. Poorly Gordon.