What an extraordinary, alien, indecorous and absolutely thrilling few days of British politics. But what if it wasn’t real? What if it was just the parting masterstroke of a dying government?

The Parallax Brief wonders.

Gordon Brown’s first resignation of recent days, the one in which he removed himself as the main road block preventing negotiations between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, was certainly audacious. But the Parallax Brief certainly doesn’t buy the received history already created by the talking-heads consensus that it was nothing but a desperate Labour attempt to cling onto power scuppered only by a truculent Balls here and a cozy Clegg-Cameron relationship there.

Consider the evidence.

Labour-connected hack Polly Toynbee wrote that Labour MPs are secretly relieved to be out of power. This surely makes sense. They must know they’ve given the Tories the mother of all hospital passes; pushed the poison pill so far down the throat of the Treasury that whichever party has to swallow the spending cuts and tax hikes is bound to suffer appallingly.

Further, Labour also knows that it’s going to have to select a new leader. In the end Mr Brown was as unpopular in the Parliamentary Labour Party as he was with the country. Even in victory, it’s unlikely he would have survived a full term. Far easier to hold a leadership election from the Opposition benches.

After avoiding the electoral massacre many feared (remember the horror stories of late last year of Labour people panicked about returning fewer than 200 seats?) it would surely be surprising Labour wasn’t far happier to hand over power and take the time to reshape their party, chose a new leader, replenish their empty coffers and attack the Conservatives, who will make a deliciously inviting target as they savage public spending to right the ship of state.

But if the Parallax Brief is correct in assuming this, why didn’t Labour sit in the background and try to appear magnanimous while allowing the Lib Dems to lift the Tories over the threshold into coalition government?

Realpolitik, that’s why.

Those on the right of the Conservative Party, the ones none too pleased with Cameron anyway, and even less pleased with his Big Society election pitch, have barely concealed their contempt at his immediate offer to open negotiations with the Liberal Democrats – the Leftish, pro-Europe, unilateralist, tree-hugging, beardy-weirdy Liberal Democrats. Norman Tebbit outright said it was wrong; Frazer Nelson, the editor of the Spectator, and wired into the Conservatives as much as any journalist, said at first that Spectator couldn’t support it. Iain Martin, editor of the Wall Street Jorunal Europe, wrote a series of increasingly testy blogs about the negotiations. And although we didn’t hear from them, the Parallax Brief would be willing to bet the ranch that a sizable portion of the Conservative Party felt likewise.

By tempting the Liberal Democrats into negotiations, Labour gave this hornets nest a good shake. The usually cool Malcolm Rifkind appeared incandescent on the 24 hour news stump when news of the secret negotiations broke. The Spectator and Telegraph spoke of Clegg’s perfidy. Meantime, once Labour had out bid the Tories, Mr Cameron would have looked very foolish before his party indeed – and more important for a Tory, weak – if he offered compromise and good will, only to be outflanked at the end. Labour forced him to up his offer, and up it he did, offering a electoral reform referendum on switching from FPTP to AV. This will have made the internal strains within his party even worse.

But wait, there’s more!

By tempting the Liberal Democrats into secret negotiations, Labour made Nick Clegg look as brazenly self serving as the rest.

The Parallax Brief is open to the possibility that Lord Mandleson and Alastair Campbell, apparently the main driving forces behind the offer, were desperate to cling to power. Certainly, these publicity loving, war-addicted souls will find life lonely outside government without the compensation of sitting on the Opposition benches in the Commons to keep them in the fray. It’s also possible that both cooked up the ruse as a convenient way to extrude Mr. Brown from the leadership.

But that aside, Labour has, in the space of not much more than 24 hours, sullied the pristine Lib Dem image, catalyzed the already festering resentment in the press (and no doubt the party), and, by forcing the Conservative negotiation team to cede more and more, planted the seeds of resentment that can open into full blown rebellion further down the line.

Is it too much to think that the Dark Lord of Spin suffered Clegg to hunger and then fed him with manna*? Once Clegg took the bait, the trap was sprung and Mandelson was in a no lose situation: either back in government, or despoiling his replacements.

*Deuteronomy, since you ask