Analysis

As MPs today say a cheery farewell to Westminster for another year and turn their minds to carols, mince pies and all things Christmassy, Gordon Brown will be praying for some Yuletide respite from six months of fire, flood, pestilence and ineptitude.

On the evidence of yesterday's events the spirit of kindness and goodwill to all men does not extend to the lugubrious inhabitant of 10 Downing Street.

Another day of woe began with journalists asking awkward questions about the PM's faith in Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, who is supposedly at loggerheads with the UK Government over Northern Rock and changes to the so-called tripartite arrangements to avert another banking disaster.

It was claimed a senior official at the Bank - no names mentioned - felt ministers were "unable to focus because morale in the government is so low".

No 10 insisted: "The Prime Minister's morale is very good as you would expect." As for Mr King, Mr Brown had "full confidence" in him and thought he was doing a "first- rate job". Asked if Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, felt the same, the PM's spokesman replied: "I'm sure he does."

But sources are suggesting that, with the Northern Rock drama still to run its uncertain course, Mr King might go before he is pushed; the renewal of his tenure at Threadneedle Street remains conspicuously absent.

If that were not enough, Mr Brown's fortunes were less than helped by the lunch- time appearance of Charlie Falconer, one-time flatmate of Tony Blair who was quickly dumped as Lord Chancellor when the MP for Cowdenbeath took over the reins of power.

The ex-minister popped up to insist that the PM's drive for a 42-day terror detention limit was simply not needed. "If it is not necessary because you don't need it to fight terrorism effectively, then you shouldn't do it," he told the BBC.

Within an hour, Mr Brown was being barracked and berated at the Commons dispatch box over last week's EU summit. David Cameron used the opportunity to launch another personal broadside at the Prime Minister, accusing him of being "shifty and untrustworthy" as the Conservative leader renewed demands for a referendum on the European Reform Treaty.

An hour later, Mr Darling was updating MPs on the HM Revenue and Customs data security blunder, admitting police still had not recovered the missing computer disks, which contained the personal details of 25 million people.

Embarrassment was piled on embarrassment when Ruth Kelly, Westminster's Transport Secretary, joined the ministerial queue to make a statement, admitting that the personal details of some three million learner drivers had gone Awol.

This, she assured colleagues, was not as bad as the HMRC scandal because this time banking details were not among the missing information. MPs were not impressed.

Of course, it allowed opposition members to pile on the pressure and talk of "systemic" failure and ministerial "incompetence" even though politicians were not personally responsible for the lost information.

If all that were not enough, David Harnett, the acting head of HMRC, under cross-examination by MPs, confirmed police were investigating the disappearance of 1.5kg of cocaine from a supposedly secure lock-up in Coventry. Thankfully, he assured back benchers that guns, ammunition and passports were not involved in the disappearance.

Just to cap a wonderful day for Mr Brown, a parliamentary written answer revealed that a member of security staff at the Home Office was arrested on Friday after being exposed as an illegal immigrant.

The illegal worker was identified and arrested the day after Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, revealed that more than 11,000 illegal immigrants could have been cleared by the authorities to take on sensitive security jobs since 2004.

And last night, the Tories claimed there was an effective "stealth amnesty" after it was revealed that only around 52,000 cases had been dealt with in a backlog of asylum seekers numbering between 400,000 and 450,000.

Add to all this the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth and blue tongue, the failed terror attacks, the criticism of lack of resources and Army overstretch by former military chiefs, the political bungle of the General Election that never was, the police probe into the party funding row, the controversy over police pay, the prospect of an economic downturn with rising inflation next year and the little matter of the Tories hitting 45% in the polls, then one can understand how Mr Brown is looking somewhere - anywhere - for solace.

Recently, the PM was asked what he wanted for Christmas and replied: "A day off." He should be so lucky.

After all, there are still two weeks of 2007 to fit in another disaster or two.

First came the rain and the terror ... then foot-and-mouth ... then Northern Rock ... then Donorgate ... and finally missing data

August
A new outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease linked to a government laboratory in Surrey brought a new crisis. Later the country was also gripped by an outbreak of blue tongue disease.

September
Northern Rock was hit by the first run on a major bank since the Depression of the 1930s as savers queued for hours to withdraw their money after the troubled mortgage giant announced that it was being bailed out of a cash crisis by the Bank of England.

November
Property developer David Abrahams sparked the so-called Donorgate scandal after it emerged that he gifted nearly £400,000 to the Labour Party through third parties, breaking electoral laws which state that the source of such donations must be identified.

November 20
The missing data crisis broke with revelations that the personal details of 25 million people went missing after a clerk at HM Revenue and Customs breached protocol by sending two discs, each containing the entire child benefit database, to the National Audit Office through the internal mail. A series of similar cases followed.

December 11
It was revealed that two computer discs with details of more than 7000 motorists in Northern Ireland disappeared after they were sent by Parcelforce from the Northern Ireland Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea.

Yesterday
It was revealed that personal details of more than three million driving test candidates have been lost by a private contractor in Iowa working for the Driving Standards Agency.