So things are very, very bad, having only recently been merely quite bad. We're back in recession; another Tory cabinet member is on the rocks; yet for some reason George Osborne seemed in a manically good mood in the Commons ahead of PMQs, chatting with Theresa May and laughing away. Both cabinet ministers are in a fair amount of trouble. Is it gallows humour?
Regardless David Cameron, sat next to Osborne, was not laughing, flicking through his papers as the clock ticked towards mid-day. The prime minister was literally red-faced. Either the St. Tropez was applied for a little too long or the PM is extremely stressed. He resembled a beetroot throughout PMQs, which was a bit of a disaster for him, truth be told. It was always going to be difficult, though, given the news agenda.
It was a pretty testy and confident performance from Ed Miliband, with lot of finger pointing. It shouldn't be such a revelation but the Labour leader has hitherto been unable to point, preferring to grip the dispatch box for dear life, perhaps fearful that he'll get blown away. Today though his finger jabbed repeatedly at the government benches.
It's actually Cameron who often found himself gripping the side of his own despatch box, rubbing the brass sides with his fingers, clearly struggling over the deafening yells of the Labour MPs opposite, who are having a whale of a time.
The opposition front bench on the other hand all look very sombre, except for Angela Eagle, the shadow leader of the House, who spends almost the entire half hour berating the PM and shaking her head in sheer disbelief at him.
Miliband has no choice but to go on the recession, even though in reality it's pretty boring and so-well trodden ground it's hardly worth recapping - Labour thinks the Tories cut too fast, Cameron says we've got low interest rates, so that's alright.
Clearly getting nowhere and at risk of sending everyone to sleep Miliband switched to the woes surrounding Jeremy Hunt. But the prime minister decided he wanted to talk about the economy some more, because he wanted to take this opportunity to blame it all on Labour.
Then mass pointing breaks out across the Commons. Interestingly, all the Tory backbenchers start pointing at Labour, but the Lib Dems don't.
After repeated accusations from Miliband that his culture secretary has been a bad boy, Cameron said it would be wrong to prejudge the Leveson Inquiry. Former Labour culture secretary Ben Bradshaw comes close to losing bladder control, clapping his hands like a seal asking for a fish and jumping up and down in his seat.
Miliband says its not Leveson's job to ensure the integrity of the government. Labour backbenchers are not just cheering, some of them are practically screaming.
"He's the prime minister. If he can't defend his culture secretary he should be out the door," Miliband said.
Then Cameron dropped the bomb. "The culture secretary has my full support," he said quite gamely, but this causes Labour collectively to collapse into a hysterical heap, and then start waving goodbye to Jeremy Hunt, who has been unfortunately made to sit there and suck it all up, ahead of his statement later.
David Cameron tried to finish off by saying he would not duck his responsibilities, but it's hard to hear him amid the Labour jeers. They know their leader just had a corker of a PMQs, which was easily the noisiest since the last election.
Later on, perhaps when he thought nobody was looking, Cameron told a backbencher: "There is a bit of a need for hand on heart. We all did too much cosying up to Rupert Murdoch," words which might easily come back to haunt him later when he finds himself cosying up to Leveson himself, whose spirit appears to be hanging over the Commons like Banquo's ghost.