Martin Bright

The Labour party now has three weeks to save itself from oblivion. The only question facing MPs is whether the open fratricide that would follow a challenge to Gordon Brown would be preferable to the death by a thousand humiliating cuts if the Prime Minister sits tight at Number 10. The European and local council elections on 4 June have been as good as written off by the party. Beyond the Prime Minister’s inner circle there is now a tangible fury at Gordon Brown, with the Damian McBride affair, the Gurkha fiasco and the expenses scandal merely reinforcing what they knew already about the Prime Minister. Where there was once grudging respect and then pity there is now barely disguised disdain.

It was an honour to write the Spectator politics column this week. You can find my thoughts on the collaspe of Labour morale here.

I have been reading Marcia Williams's 1972 memoir of her time with Harold Wilson, Inside Number 10 (no don't ask why) and come to the chapter with the wonderful title The Inevitability of Gradualness. Here, Wilson's former personal and private secretary weighs up the successes and failures of the 1960s Wilson governments. On the negative side, failure to reform the civil service, on the plus side the Open University: that sort of thing. At one point Williams quotes New Statesman and Observer contributor Francis Hope writing in the New York Times about the Wilson years: "The achievements of the Labour Government were mostly minor acts of decency." I discover that Hope later died in a plane crash over France, but I congratulate him posthumously for this wonderful piece of analysis.

We blithely say that politicians are despised even more than journalists. But those who work closely with MPs generally end up thinking they are a pretty decent lot. The revelations of the past week have changed all that. Speaker Martin's intervention today was a new low point. Beyond embarrassing, it verged on the seriously chillling. Poor Nick Robinson looks like he has had the stuffing knocked out of him. Those columnists who have made a career out of saying we should have more respect for politicians look pretty stupid now. In a previous post I found myself saying that the expenses scandal would not have made such a splash in less desperate times for the government. Silly, silly me. I now recognise this criss is very serious indeed and always would have been.

The real question for Labour now is how the party will rebuild itself. This has important democratic implications: we have witnessed how an over-mighty government can operate without the scrutiny of a strong oppoistion over the past decade and it is often not a pretty sight. But there is a serious problem for the Labour Party here. If the collapse continues for much longer there will be no one of any seniority or experience left standing. Some will think this is no bad thing and that the Labour Party needs a completely fresh start. But I have always felt there is considerable talent in the younger generation of Labour politicians and it would be a tragedy if the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. There has to be an argument for that generation to take control now.

If the Tory leader is as canny a political operator as I think he is then he should adopt Compass's idea of setting up the Post Office as a not-for-profit company immediately. The idea from the left of centre think tank had been dismissed too quickly by Downing Street, which seems determined to alienate as many Labour MPs as possible (having done a pretty successful job with the party's members and voters). Cameron has talked the talk about his support for co-operatives and mutual organisations. He should now extend his support to the not-for-profit sector in what would be a hugely symbolic statement of intent.

Mental illness has always taken up a lot of space in the lexicon of New Labour,  I have always thought Alistair Campbell's own brush with the black dog had something to do with this. From Ron Davies's "moment of madness" to Gordon Brown's "psychological flaws", the terror of incipient madeness has always been a New Labour nightmare. I wrote about this tendency a few years ago but recent events have brought me back the subject. It was telling that Damian McBride's emails contained references to Frances Osborne's state of mind - as if it would be a bad thing that she was upset by her husband's political misfortunes.

Hazel Blears knows exactly what she's doing by intervening in print during the Labour Party's darkest spring. Think of it the other way around. Ministers know that when the Prime Minister pledges 100 per cent support then it's curtains. It's a sign of the declining authority of Number 10 that this rule has now been inverted. Cabinet loyalty is assumed. It should not have to be asserted. Hazel Blears is stating the obvious, which is very dangerous indeed. Of course the government was on the wrong side of the gurkha debate, of course it is failing to communicate with the voters, of course the YouTube performance was a disaster. But Cabinet ministers are not supposed to say these things.

This month's Standpoint carries a powerful piece by Nick Cohen about the recent bad behaviour in the court of the Prime Minister. I will say no more than that.

I thought the Cameron-Clegg show (or was it the Clegg-Cameron show?) provided us with an interesting new double-act today. Was this the dry-run for the coalition following the next election? The two men didn't look entirely uncomfortable in each other's company, I thought.  The government's position on the Gurkhas is so patently unjust that it provided the opposition with the easiest of open goals. As James has said, of course soldiers who have fought for this country should have the right to live here. It is hard to see what constituency ministers thought they were appealing to in resisting this.

It's not often you find a full-blown leftie on the pages of The Times (or any British newspaper come to that). But Janice Turner's attack o the undeserving rich today is magnificent. Get Thee To a Miserable Swiss Tax Haven is a wonderful, joyous broadside against the whingers who believe that the new 50 pence tax rate will kill enterprise. She's not really a socialist, she's an old-fashioned liberal with a social conscious (which puts you pretty much on the left after the shift in the consensus that took place in the mid-1990s). But this paragraph is particularly good: "The disturbing thing about Alistair Darling's Budget was not that it extracted a few extra thou from the few, the fortunate 350,000 or so who already enjoy six times the average British salary.

The papers make pretty depressing reading this morning, whether you are Alistair Darling, a Spactator reader facing the prospect of a 50p top tax rate or a member of the mythological "hardworking" family. Growth at its lowest rate since the war, stratospheric debt, unemployment over two million: the end of the first decade of the 21st century is turning into a living nightmare. And I don't buy the prediction that this will be over by the end of the year.  I agree with those who say that the government which takes us out of recession will harness the hard work, enterprise and aspiration of the nation. But I really don't the 50p tax "bombshell" is the real issue here. The micro-entrepreneurs and innovators that we need so dearly at the moment are not people earning the top salaries.