Editorial

There is something starkly tragic about Gordon Brown. Having waited for years for his predecessor to hand over power, Mr Brown is peering into a future that no longer seems to be there. It was not supposed to be like this.

It was not what he promised outside 10 Downing Street after he answered the Queen's call to become Prime Minister. Then he intimated that no task would be too arduous, no challenge too stark but he would tackle the first and overcome the second, so help him.

He had not taken the credit crunch into account. Among other factors that militated against him, that one in particular and the rise in energy prices seem to have done for him.

He and his government continue to give every impression that they have lost the plot and the stage reached where suicide looks to be a better option than massacre at the next general election.

Mr Brown's Chancellor et several al have helped this scenario along, for it was Alistair Darling's extraordinary interview in The Guardian three weeks ago - the economic times were "arguably the worst in 60 years" and people had had more than enough of (Labour) - and Foreign Secretary David Milliband hurling a metaphorical knife at the back of the Prime Minister that created a grow-ing coalition of the increasingly uneasy.

It is all very well for the Trade Minister, Lord Jones, to disclose, as he did last week, that the Prime Minister will be reshuffling the Cabinet "in two or three weeks" time but with resignations and sackings the order of the day - the most recent resignation being that of David Cairns, the Minister of State in the Scotland office, the same man who was saying publicly only a month or so ago that Mr Brown was the right man for the job - it is difficult to see how much manoeuvre Mr Brown has at his disposal. Two alternatives are available.

The first is for him to emulate Harold MacMillan's Night of the Long Knives when the Conservative Prime Minister carried out a ruthless purge of his Cabinet 46 years ago after a serious loss in a bye-election. Mr Brown has experienced a number of these and they led to a general dissipation of morale in his government. Does he have Mr MacMillan's nerve? He has demonstrated little aptitude for ruthlessness as Prime Minister, an office that sometimes demands this, unlike the tendency he had for riding roughshod over the opposition as Chancellor.

The other alternative is to reassert himself as leader of the party in what is the most critical moment in his career - the annual party conference taking place in Manchester.

There he is fighting for his life, but, more important, his opponents will be challenged to strike at him in the most public manner possible.

It is a dangerous time for him. Should a Cassius advance on to the platform, how many other conspirators will gather round him to deliver the "most unkindest cut of all"?

But what a time to change a leader with financial institutions desperately trying to return to some semblance of normality. Did anyone say Darling? Perhaps this will be his swan song at the conference and his political salvation.