Mr Peter Mandelson's resignation ranks among the spectacular British ministerial downfalls of recent years.
Probably the most infamous of all this century was John Profumo's resignation, not merely from his Cabinet job as Secretary of State for War in 1963 but from Parliament altogether. This was because he lied to the House of Commons by saying that he did not have sexual relations with Christine Keeler, a call girl whose other customers included a Soviet naval attache.
The most memorable resignation of the 1980s was that of Cecil Parkinson, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who was forced to quit after disclosure of his affair with his one-time secretary Sara Keays. The furore surrounding his resignation - which Margaret Thatcher was most reluctant to accept - ruined what should have been the Tories' victory conference after their 1983 landslide win over Labour. However, after a few years, Mr Parkinson - now Lord Parkinson - was back in the Cabinet as Energy Secretary.
It was David Mellor, the Heritage Secretary, whose resignation shortly after the 1992 general election, sparked off a virtual non-stop cycle of sleaze during John Major's government. His resignation followed an affair with an out-of-work actress, Antonia de Sancha and a holiday at the invitation of Mona Bauwens, the daughter of a high-ranking Palestine Liberation Organisation official.
This was followed with almost tedious regularity by a series of incidents (sexual and financial) which shamed ministers and backbenchers alike. The casualties included Tim Yeo, an Environment Minister, who admitted fathering a child with a Conservative councillor he met at a party conference.
Harold Macmillan, when Prime Minister, suffered one of the most damaging instances of "mass" resignations of all. Peter Thorneycroft, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and two of his Treasury Ministers, Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch, all resigned in 1958 in protest against increases in public spending. But with his typical unflappability, Mr Macmillan, instead of cancelling his engagements, insisted on going ahead with a planned six-week tour of the Commonwealth.
Not many people will recall the dumping, amid uproar, of Sir Charles ("Three-in-a-Bed") Dilke, whose sexual antics scandalised English society and Queen Victoria in particular. He was appointed Gladstone's Local Government Minister in 1882 and quit in 1886 after being cited as corespondent in a divorce case.
His young sister-in-law, Mrs Donald Crawford, accused him of seducing her.