Skipper

At PMQs last Wednesday it felt a relief for Brown to deal with the swineflu threat: well prepared, not Labour's fault, easy consensus all round. Then came the Gurkha issue and, it went a bit pear-shaped. These past 10 days or so have been awful. A week or so ago it was the shocking revelations of Damian McBride's smearing campaign-and it was so disingenuous of Brown to pretend he knew nothing when 'McPoison', we have been assured by insiders, had been doing his dirty work for years. Just when we needed a period of calm, came the expenses debacle.

What possessed Brown to do that embarrassing Youtube video? He had set up Sir Christopher Kelly to conduct an inquiry then, without any consultation with his own party, he fires off his own ideas- presumably because he believed he knows best- and drives up the motorway the wrong way. Cameron and Clegg then snookered him by refusing to agree his scheme. Then came the humiliating Gurkha defeat followed by the surrender over the expenses issue.

This draws a picture of a politician totally unable to judge the mood of the country. Maybe his recent journies to Poland and Afghanistan- where he received yet more snubs, had left him exhausted? If so he should have had the experience to take advice: Mandelson should have whispered in his ear to prevent such directionless meanderings. Today the Indy sports an apposite headline: 'Labour United in Despair'; Blunkett warns of a 'meltdown in trust' and Charles Clarke, once a powerful heavyweight figure and still respected on the backbenches says he is 'ashamed to be a Labour MP'. Some say it's all reminiscent of Major's government at its worst- I think it's a lot worse than that.