Government shaken by resignation drought

Tony Blair's government failed to be dealt another blow yesterday when yet again none of his Cabinet resigned over the threat of war with Iraq.

For the past few weeks, the government has staggered on each day without anyone falling on their sword of principle, despite leaks to the press by several members of the Cabinet publicly questioning a military attack on Saddam Hussein.

"I share the pain of the Iraqi people," Clare Short told several journalists quietly in a pre-arranged series of off-the-record lunch meetings at chic restaurants around the centre of London, "and I really cannot understand why Tony doesn't seem to take what I say seriously about resigning. I've been saying it loud and clear for the past nine months after all."

Robin Cook told some friends, well, acquaintances, over a bottle of Chilean white at All Bar One: "This time I'm really, really going to do it. I don't care what Gaynor says — the residence is not that important, it's the principle of the thing." Once sober however, the sex thimble claimed: "I can achieve far more inside my ministerial Jag, I mean office, than out of it."

Education secretary Estelle Morris, who is already under pressure to resign, told reporters: "It's a point of principle. No other ministers in this government have resigned unless they have been categorically proven to be inept or to have lied and I stand by that."