A canary keels over in the domestic coalmine | Matthew Parris

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Yesterday James Purnell voiced his depart from politics.

Today, in the West Midlands, Gordon Brown will betray Labours debate slogans. This week, from a GMTV sofa, David Cameron complained about the sexualisation of children.

Do not imagine, associate Britons, that these stories are unrelated. They all wheeze the same painful need: not (as Mr Cameron hopes) for immature kids to be since behind their childhood, but for politicians to retrieve their adulthood. Mr Purnell, one of the youngest of his cohort, has usually motionless to do so. He has outgrown them and might be politics.

The depart of Mr Purnell from Parliament might be compared with the keeling over in the enclosure of the array canary. Sent down a cave to advise of the accumulation of fatal gas, the bird some-more supportive to toxicity than humans gave miners time to escape. Mr Purnell, likewise, gives a notice of tainted air to colleagues who have common his clarity of intelligent role in politics. They might all be on a stealing to nothing.

BACKGROUNDPower to the people - and certitude them tooAnalysis: Purnell"s depart leaves most losersPurnell quits Parliament for a "normal life"The dispute lines are end contra charge

But distinct the canary, Mr Purnell is not an unusually frail creature: usually realistic, intelligent and might be not in in the mind-sapping, spirit-breaking obsessiveness that the governing body seems to require.

The former Work and Pensions Secretary would not, from his progressing domestic career, have seemed noted out possibly by fastidiousness or by any unusually towering clarity of dignified crusade. He worked his approach up by his celebration machine, starting as an undergraduate researcher to Tony Blair, then, after a bit of think-tankery and a spell as a grey fit in the BBC, returning to No 10 as a special adviser. Thence in to the Commons, where on-message and splendid he one after another fast up the ladder.

The initial that most outward governing body listened of him was when, absent from a print event to proclaim a Private Finance Initiative sanatorium project, his picture was photoshopped in to a opening left in the choice for this purpose. It was probable to etch Mr Purnell as an aggressively desirous celebration apparatchik. Many did.

And might be he meant to be. But he had ideas, and he was essentially meddlesome in improved government. More than that, perhaps, he was one of those people for whom there unequivocally is a so-far-and-no-farther and we do not regularly find this about ourselves or others until it happens.

Whether Mr Purnell had started to despondency of Mr Blairs earnest prior to Mr Blair give up I do not know; but after Mr Brown took over he did despair. His remarkable exit from the Cabinet last year was not meant to be an action of eminent self-sacrifice. He never meant to be St Joan of the Blairites, as a small fans right away paint him. His was an try to begin a mutiny in that he kept his nerve, and his approaching comrades lost theirs.

At that point the required book would have Mr Purnell who is still usually 39 cling to on, distortion low for a while, await the tumble of Mr Brown, and afterwards work for the takeover of the celebration by his own gang: people such as David Miliband, former Blairites, open use reformers and new Labour modernisers. Even if it took a decade he would have had time to re-emerge between the care of the subsequent Labour government.

Instead, the canary drops from the perch. This is revelation us something about the approach the Labour Party is going Mr Purnell seemingly despairs of his colleagues instincts for presence but Im fearful it is revelation us something more: about the paralysing gas unresolved around the total of the governing body at present; about the stultification of debate; and about the infantilising of domestic messages. We have entered a looking-glass universe in that at Bhs on Oxford Street small girls hunger for padded bras, whilst down the highway at Westminster big boys parrot choruses in childrens games.

Here are the hide previews that a watchful universe has been since to assimilate will form Labours 4 debate slogans:

• Standing up for the most

• Ensuring the liberation

• Protecting frontline services

• Protecting jobs and new industries

Youll find a some-more estimable set of imperatives in Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

There is additionally to be unveiled, I understand, a small kind of über-slogan to weave together these 4 ancillary themes. How about Whos Been Eating My Porridge? But if the governing body has turn a competition towards the undiluted vacuum, Mr Brown is not the usually runner.

Not 6 weeks ago Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat Leader, spoken that his celebration could do improved than airbrushed posters, incomprehensible slogans. So how is it doing?

The trademark now getting dressed the website is Were the usually celebration that believes in fairness. Quick work with a mist can, I imagine, to transform this in to Were the usually celebration that believes in fairies, that would, at least, be bold.

The slogans that the Lib-Dems are taking advantage of are not. These are (their bureau informs me):

• Labour has unsuccessful and the Conservatives cant be trusted. Only the Liberal Democrats will move shift that functions for you

• The Liberal Democrats are opposite since were the usually celebration that believes in fairness: well move shift that functions for you, instead of usually those at the tip

• Only the Liberal Democrats can give Britain the uninformed begin it needs. We will remodel the economy so everybody gets a satisfactory understanding and repair the damaged domestic complement so the right decisions are taken. By putting integrity at the heart of British society, we will broach shift that functions for you

Yes youve speckled it. An über-slogan: Change that functions for you. As renowned from shift that doesnt.

Which leaves us as the open finance management nosedive and the creditors circle, as the immature impoverished long for but experience of work, as each meditative voter worries about how the ambitions of supervision can be reined behind to encounter the resources accessible to compensate for it, and as we are dragged deeper in to a dispute in Afghanistan as destroyed as it is ruthless with the Leader of the Opposition, on a lounge at GMTV, fretting about padded bras.

James Purnells exit creates a point about some-more than the contemptible state of his own party. It asks a subject about what grant a brave, sharp-minded, idealistic and undoctrinaire particular can goal to have in complicated British politics, from inside the tent. Answering it for himself, Mr Purnell has usually left outside. He might be a small time.