Gordon Brown's cliff walk

FT.com

Gordon Brown's premiership is approaching its logical conclusion. So is the long spell in office for the Labour party that began on a bright spring morning in May 1997 when Tony Blair was cheered into 10 Downing Street. Now, as it careers towards destruction, the central preoccupation of Mr Brown's administration has become nothing so much as who should be sitting in the driving seat at the moment of fatal impact.

The unanswered questions in all this have been essentially ones of sequencing. Will the prime minister and his party drive over the cliff separately or jointly? Is the crash imminent, or can the Prime Minister delay the reckoning? After the resignation of James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary, the Prime Minister's hopes of survival have much diminished.

For the past several weeks, Britain's voters have been distracted by the chicanery, some real, much imagined, of MPs of all parties in maximising their parliamentary allowances. The national furore over the often tawdry misuse of public funds has obscured the underlying forces shaping the future of British politics. Now attention is returning to the more familiar territory of the terminal condition of Mr Brown's administration.

That is as it should be. Save for a handful of cases where the claims of MPs were probably fraudulent, the uproar over expenses said as much about the state of the national psyche as about the integrity of its politics.

Disaffection with Mr Brown's government has deeper roots than dodgy expense chits. Labour's poll ratings, hovering at record lows around 20 per cent, also speak to more than the inevitable popular disaffection that comes with a deep economic recession. The great paradox of this Prime Minister's career is that of a politician who spent a lifetime in the ruthless pursuit of the highest office only to arrive without strategy or purpose for his premiership.

Poisoned by the curious synthesis of hubris and exhaustion that often describes political parties too long in power, Labour deserves to lose the election due by mid-2010. Press them, and some of the most senior members of the government will all but acknowledge as much.

The cabinet has included several young ministers – the brothers David and Ed Miliband as well as Mr Purnell spring to mind – with energy and ambition. But beyond the pursuit of so-called dividing lines with the Conservatives, there is no direction from the top.

What now most concerns most ministers and MPs, and explains why many want to see Mr Brown ousted quickly, is the scale of the expected defeat. The choice they ponder is between a Tory landslide that leaves Labour in the wilderness for a generation and losing by a margin that could see it challenge for office again within a few years.

If there is any residual optimism on the Labour side it speaks to doubts about their opponents. The Conservatives have been skilfully refashioned by David Cameron into an opposition that knows how to win an election. By turning towards the centre, the Tory leader has dispelled the fatal impression that his party does not much like the country it wants to rule. Yet the Conservatives still lack a persuasive governing prospectus. Mr Cameron has earned more respect than enthusiasm. No one quite knows how his party would carry the burdens of office.

One way or another Mr Brown's fate should be sealed in the coming days. The results of this week's local and European elections, distorted as they may be by the expenses furore, will be the signal for another spasm of Labour infighting. Most ministers expect the outcome of the polls to sit on a spectrum running from the dreadful to the catastrophic.

The panic is already palpable. In other circumstances, a Prime Minister might have said "good riddance” to the ministers who quit the government this week. Jacqui Smith's tenure as Home Secretary will be remembered for its mediocrity. But these are not normal times. The departure of the Home Secretary and a few others in advance of a planned ministerial reshuffle spoke instead of Mr Brown's draining authority.

Reconstructing the government is Mr Brown's last chance to keep his senior colleagues in the fold before an election next spring. In present circumstances, however, the opportunity is double-edged. The reshuffle might just as easily expose the absence of prime ministerial authority as replenish it.

It is an open secret that Mr Brown would like to move Alistair Darling and promote his loyal acolyte Ed Balls to the chancellorship. Yet this move would confirm in the minds of colleagues that the Prime Minister was retreating into the narrow factionalism that has so often defined his politics. It might well add fuel to the fires of rebellion.

The favoured candidate of those who want to defenestrate Mr Brown is Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary. Mr Johnson is an able politician with a good public face. Unlike Mr Brown he comes across well on television, something of no small significance to those MPs who harbour hopes of clinging on to their own seats at Westminster in spite of expectations of a Tory victory.

Mr Johnson's strength is the personal story of someone who has risen from humble beginnings to high office without, as far as one can tell, making any political enemies. Yet his firmest supporters would struggle to argue he has anything resembling a compelling political vision for the country. Put bluntly, he is a limit-the-damage choice.

In any event, Labour needs more than an attractive face to rescue its fortunes. Behind the plots, infighting and factionalism that will doubtless make headlines during the coming days, lies a deeper sense that this is a government that no longer knows, or cares, what it is for. Its remaining purpose is to cling on to office. That seems to me to be the essential truth that the voters have grasped.

As for Mr Brown, ministers had expected he would survive. The departure of Mr Purnell, one of the brightest and best in his government, has changed the calculations. Amid the multiple ironies of the Prime Minister's predicament, the most exquisite is his dependence on the support of the erstwhile enemy and arch-Blairite he brought back to the cabinet last autumn. Lord Mandelson could yet rescue Mr Brown from the immediate threat but it may well be too late.