Tough choices for these tough times

Food and energy prices soaring... Consumer confidence at its lowest for 18 years...Health and council workers threatening action over pay...House prices plummeting...Backbenchers threatening open revolt...

All this, and Labour at its most unpopular since polling began in 1943.

Unpopular: Gordon Brown

Truly, troubles are crashing in on Gordon Brown from every side.

Food and energy prices soaring... Consumer confidence at its lowest for 18 years...Health and council workers threatening action over pay...House prices plummeting...Backbenchers threatening open revolt...

All this, and Labour at its most unpopular since polling began in 1943.

Less than a year into his premiership, how can the man hailed as Labour's most successful chancellor have come to this?

Bad luck, of course, has a great deal to do with it.

After more than a decade of steady growth, Britain might have endured any one of the three seismic shocks now shaking our economy  -  the oil crisis, the international credit crunch or the sudden surge in world food prices.

But all three at once? Today every household is feeling the blast of what economists call the 'perfect storm'.

Yet Mr Brown cannot blame all his woes on cruel fate. For the Blair government, in which he was so influential, made serious mistakes in the years when it seemed that the economic sun would never set.

There was the ill-judged decision to pump billions into public services and the welfare state without reforming them.

Linked with that was the reckless expansion of the public sector payroll  -  with catastrophic implications for the state pensions bill, decades hence.

As for the oil shock, every one of us is now suffering from the Cabinet's collective failure to plan ahead and secure the nation's energy supplies.

Worst of all, with his repeated hubristic claim that he had abolished the boom-and-bust cycle, Mr Brown disobeyed the first rule of good housekeeping: Put something aside for a rainy day.

So where can he turn? With nothing left in the kitty, he cannot spend his way back to popularity without mortgaging Britain's future even more heavily. But it's not too late for him to recover respect.

As times get rockier, this will mean providing firm leadership and starting the long and painful work of pruning the public sector.

As for David Cameron, with the dire state of the economy he must be wondering whether he wants to win the next election. For it will take a great deal more than his easy charm to set the country's finances straight.

The Mail has no doubt that he has steel. He must start showing it.

Under surveillance
Armed with lasers and cameras, one set of council tax snoopers is prying into our bedrooms and bathrooms and listing our home improvements.

Meanwhile, another is fitting microchip spies to our rubbish bins, in preparation for pay-as-you-throw taxes.

Whatever happened to the notions that an Englishman's home is his castle, and the job of the state is to serve the citizen  -  not the other way round?

Call this justice?
Today the Mail offers a fascinating glimpse of the life behind bars of child killer Ian Huntley  -  or 'Ian' as officials call him.

Prison officers are under orders to attend to his every comfort, serve his favourite meals, keep him entertained and treat him as a 'member of the family'.

'Staff must be aware,' say the authorities, 'that there will be occasions when he will be in a low mood.'

There are many more occasions when the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman feel low.

Does anyone in our mockery of a criminal justice system think of them?