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Beware the Ides of Ivan. A previously inconspicuous mid-ranking health minister, Ivan Lewis, launched himself on an unsuspecting public this week with a bout of morbid navel-gazing, to the effect that the Government had lost touch with the families it most needed to appeal to if it is to win a fourth term.
It never seems to occur to politicians, when they deliver these judgments, that they might be part of the problem: what has Mr Lewis done to appeal to the "mainstream majority"? Just asking.
But he has a point. "The unprecedented coalition which has delivered an unprecedented three terms in power is now under severe strain."
I'll say. An ally of the Chief Whip mutters that for several years, the main job of the chief enforcer was to prod reluctant members to vote for legislation Labour backbenchers disliked. That was hard enough as the Blair stardust waned. Now, he says, the job is to avoid the spread of panic in the ranks about Labour's performance.
A recent ICM poll puts the Conservatives on 42 per cent to 29 for Labour, their biggest lead since the late 1980s. The southern squeeze on the party, which has steadily lost council seats to the Tories in the South since 1997, is likely to look more obvious after the May local elections. To say nothing of the symbolic risk to Mr Brown of Boris Johnson beating Ken Livingstone in London: by no means certain but, as Mr Livingstone's own team admit, no longer unlikely.
"For the first time watching the polls," says my Labour Party source, "I'm feeling very queasy. If the next lot don't improve, people are really going to start worrying about their seats. And that means they start worrying about Gordon."
Worrying about Gordon is something that Labour is starting to do in earnest. What makes it worse for Labour's prospects is that they do it in very different ways, catching the PM in a pincer movement.
So Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn venture forth with recommendations that a fresh sense of focus and more reform is what is required. Stephen Byers ranges wider - he finds the Embryology Bill badly handled and Mr Brown's tardiness in failing to spot the political trap of denying a free vote for so long a sign of broader weakness in political management.
On the Left, a dissatisfied faction of thinkers, sympathisers and the Labour death-wish brigade peddle the dozy notion that the way forward is to go back to pre-Blair traditional Labour themes, with a few more attacks on the rich and a bit more public ownership.
Complaining about how "Blairite" Mr Brown has become is an odd charge to raise against someone who has just nationalised a high-street bank and clamped down on school admissions processes that reward middle-class parents, but there it is.
"Can we just rewind?" goes the song, whose lyrics look startlingly à propos of New Labour's doldrums.
"'Cause we're lost in indecision/And the answer is hard to find/Seems we have a lack of vision/Tell me can we just rewind"
Swirl 360 (in case you hadn't noticed) conclude: "We're dancing in the middle/And we're running out of time." One for Gordon's iPod.
This mood of fretful, sleeve-plucking anxiety and introspection is one of the most destructive to a Government's sense of purpose. The Labour ranks brood on their decline: and the more they do so, the more the latent fissures emerge, since they cannot agree why they are in the doldrums.
Mr Lewis namechecks the Iraq war as a contributory cause of Labour's unpopularity - which is true. It does not help Mr Brown's intention to draw a speedy line under the lengthy and painful war aftermath by bringing home troops that the Iraqi government's stalling attempts to break up the Basra militias mean British troops must linger in their base for longer than planned.
But his pressing problems are closer to home: a mortgage headache looming for millions, less money to spend, a looming budget deficit - and only the cold comfort of Mr Brown's pledges to "maintain stability" to fall back on.
Because we have had such a long term of prosperity, we forget it is the norm for governments to have to contend with economic tensions and turn them to their advantage. Watching Never So Good, the Howard Brenton play at the National last week, I was struck by the omission of the bitter row between Macmillan and his Chancellor, Peter Thorneycroft, about Macmillan's notorious inability to balance the books - and his Chancellor's dramatic resignation.
The famous "little local difficulty" was in the era we associate with postwar good times. Macmillan shuffled on.
Mr Brown's local difficulties are multiplying: what has not been in evidence is his ability to turn the new austerity politics to his advantage.
Treat yourself to the latest bit of direct mail from Mr Brown on the Labour website: "It is because we know that families need the security of consistently low mortgage rates that we continue to take the difficult and long-term decisions to deliver continued economic stability and interest rates as low as possible even though we face uncertain global economic conditions caused by the US housing market's problems."
Do they auto-generate this stuff ? It is a sprawling sentence of placid reassurances which are in no way reassuring.
The upheavals in Number 10 and departure of old staff to be replaced by sharp-suited newcomers from the PR business are a sign that Mr Brown is no fool about his own position.
Whatever else his old friends were doing well, they were not communicating reasons why the voters should think that Mr Brown was the man with a grip on their problems and anxieties. So now, with the communications guru Stephen Carter and a new team in place, two possibilities present themselves.
Either the shake-up under a new team, no longer trapped in the airless internal logic of years of Labour servitude, will allow the talents of "real Gordon" to emerge and show a misunderstood man whose steadiness will become an asset in difficult times.
Or Mr Brown is fatally out of tune with the mood around him and unable to master it whoever runs his communications. In that case, Labour will not recover from the sag in drive and confidence which is becoming more apparent by the week. I'd say he has his work cut out.
Reader views (2)
Poor old Gordon, you should always beware of what you wish for. Presumably he used to consider anyone could do better than dodgy dossiers, cash for peerage police investigations and 'Yo Blair's' from across the Atlantic. And with those stable economy credentials too...
- Simon Moore, Baker Street, London, 18/04/2008 15:35
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All governments eventually run out of steam. The beauty of living in a democratic system is that when that occurs, the government can be replaced.
I doubt even the most hardened Labour supporter could honestly say that it would be a good thing if their party ruled forever. There is a particular whiff of rot, a hint of decay fraying at the edges of this administration. It's time for something new.
- Christian, West Sussex, 15/04/2008 13:48
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