Yesterday's editorial discussed how the no confidence motion in the House of Assembly appeared to leave the United Bermuda Party weaker at the end of the debate than it was when it began.

The same can be said of the Progressive Labour Party Government. Although the PLP finished the debate with its majority intact, far from being solid as a rock, cracks and fissures were obvious.

Friday's debate not only exposed deep divisions in the party over the Uighur controversy, but also unhappiness about the general direction of the PLP and the Government under Premier Dr. Ewart Brown.

If the speeches of PLP dissidents Wayne Perinchief, Randy Horton and former Premier Alex Scott were the most openly critical of Dr. Brown, the most devastating came from soon to be former Cabinet Minister Dale Butler and Deputy Premier and Finance Minister Paula Cox.

Indeed, Ms Cox's description of the enormous care, debate and effort that went into the Cabinet and PLP caucus' decision to support the Bank of Butterfield guarantee contrasted enormously with the secretive and cavalier approach of Dr. Brown and Sen. David Burch in the handling of the Uighurs.

In the case of Butterfield Bank, the Cabinet met not once but twice around a caucus meeting, and according to Ms Cox, the questioning was intense, but ultimately a decision was reached.

By contrast, the resettlement of the Uighurs occurred without debate or consultation. Cabinet Ministers and MPs were presented with a fait accompli, at about the same time the Governor, the Commissioner of Police, and now it turns out, the US Consul General, were informed.

Even those, like former Premier Dame Jennifer Smith, who were very careful to say that they would not presuppose what they would have done if they were in Dr. Brown's shoes, still found fault with Dr. Brown's approach.

What should be clear from that debate is that opposition to the handling of the Uighurs was not, as Dr. Brown and his most uncritical supporters would have you believe, part of a conspiracy by whites, the United Bermuda Party, this newspaper or any of the other bogeymen whom Dr. Brown typically wheels out when he needs to get out of trouble.

Instead, the discomfort came from his own Cabinet Ministers and MPs. In many ways, they made the case better than the Opposition.

And Dr. Brown could count on very few Ministers and MPs for support. Energy Minister Terry Lister, Works Minister Derrick Burgess and Environment Minister Glenn Blakeney were forthright among Cabinet Ministers while Zane DeSilva and Walter Roban supported Dr. Brown from the backbench. Michael Scott gave Dr. Brown some support.

Health Minister Nelson Bascome was silent, as was Education Minister El James, although he did express his unhappiness with the Premier a week earlier.

When only six MPs out of 21 feel sufficiently moved to defend their leader with anything resembling passion, something is clearly wrong.

For the rest of the Cabinet, it must be clear they will never look at Dr. Brown the same way again.

Even those who did defend him essentially shrugged their shoulders; this is the way that Dr. Brown does business, they said. What are you going to do?

Increasingly it seems that the PLP, for all of the dedication and loyalty of its members and supporters, will be preoccupied with being and staying in power to the detriment of any good they might want to do. That is often the case with a party that has been in power for a decade or more.

Beyond keeping the old white establishment, supposedly personified by the UBP, out of power – and, to be frank, that threat is almost entirely imaginary – what, beyond being a vehicle for a leader, does the PLP, as it is presently constituted, stand for?