BENEDICT BROGAN: Bunkered in Downing St, as power slips away

Two days before, the Prime Minister and his key advisers had been given an astonishingly accurate prediction of how the votes in Crewe and Nantwich would fall.

A secret briefing alerted him to the possibility of a swing of between 17 and 20 per cent to the Tories – in the end it was 17.6 per cent.

Back into hiding: Mr Brown returns into what has been dubbed the 'Downing Street bunker' yesterday

In an attempt to lessen the impact of what was a shattering political landslide, journalists were warned to expect a disaster.

But Labour’s commendable honesty before the result did little to ease the pain yesterday, with attention focused as never before on Mr Brown and what MPs now described as the Downing Street ‘bunker’.

With the gallows humour that is typical of a political crisis, Westminster is ringing with knowing references to Downfall, the 2004 German film which told the story of Adolf Hitler’s final days in Berlin.

Each new headline predicting Mr Brown’s end increases the impression of a beleaguered leader and his henchmen left isolated as the New Labour project that was supposed to keep them in power collapses around them.

There are also persistent rumours at Westminster that Mr Brown’s wife Sarah is growing increasingly angry at the torrent of venom being aimed at her husband by his enemies.

Although he has studiously kept his family separate from his political life, friends concede that the attacks on him are putting unavoidable strains on his family.

His advisers accept that there is little they can do to counter damage done by anonymous briefings from politicians who question Mr Brown’s ability to survive but hesitate to say so publicly.

They seemed resigned yesterday to being drowned out by a growing clamour of alarm from anxious Labour MPs who fear Mr Brown is marching Labour to certain defeat at the next election.

Cabinet fears deepened-this week after Mr Brown convened a special political session on Tuesday to set out his plans for recovery after Labour’s drubbing at the local elections.

Some of those present said there was shock around the Cabinet table at what one said was ‘the complete absence of a serious plan’.

Another warned: ‘Gordon’s tank is empty. He’s pinning it all on the economy coming good. There are no other ideas.’

Nearly a year has passed since Mr Brown took over from Tony Blair, but he is still struggling to forge a machine around him which can create a convincing political strategy.

Ministers complain that there is no trusted heavyweight political figure at Mr Brown’s side to advise him and help him avoid pitfalls in the way that Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell supported Tony Blair.

Stephen Carter, the former advertising chief brought in by Mr Brown, is said to have brought greater calm and organisation to the system.

He has also begun the difficult task of overhauling the Prime Minister’s often tortured language and his wooden speaking style, involving more offthe-cuff performances without notes.

But he has clashed with some of Mr Brown’s loyalists who point out that he lacks political experience.

Civil servants also report wearily on the difficulty of working with a Prime Minister prone to towering rages and attacks of indecisiveness about often trivial matters.

Whitehall abounds with stories of hurled mobile phones and smashed computers.

Yesterday Mr Brown carried on with the daily duties of a Prime Minister, including official visits and a sensitive meeting with the Dalai Lama, before heading to Scotland on a family break.

Back in the ‘bunker’ officials talked optimistically of using the two years before a general election to answer the voters’ concerns about the economy, and tried their best to ignore the sound of political mortars crashing down above them.