Steve Richards: Don't blame it all on Brown. His party is in crisis too...

There is more to all this than a manic smile, malevolent emails and a Commons' defeat

We are back to where we were a year ago. There are tentative plots, a media onslaught and speculation about whether Gordon Brown will be gone before the general election. The guesswork extends beyond the usual Labour suspects who have always loathed the Prime Minister.

In tomorrow's Week In Westminster on Radio 4 the Labour MP, George Mudie, an old admirer of Brown's, tells me that if Labour is slaughtered in the elections this June and the government presses ahead with the part privatisation of the Post Office, there will be a "perfect storm" which will sweep away the Prime Minister. What is certain is that Brown faces a second successive tempestuous summer in which his leadership will be subjected to relentless, brutal scrutiny.

Some of the reasons why he is deep in a hole again are down to him. The sequence of recent dismal, disconnected events has brought his familiar flaws vividly to the fore. The Damien McBride emails, the You Tube performance on MPs' expenses, the Commons' defeat over Ghurkas, highlight a naïve reliance on thuggishly ineffective spin doctors, poor presentational skills and a deaf ear to some populist issues that other opportunistic leaders ruthlessly claim as their own.

The sequence is serious, but I am sorry to point out to the army of Brown haters in the media and beyond that it does not present the whole picture. Nor does it explain adequately why the government and Labour are in crisis. First the sequence is not quite as unusual as it seems. To take one example, in the early part of Labour's first term a spin doctor ruled out Britain's entry into the Euro on a mobile phone in a pub, the government faced a big revolt against cuts in single parent benefit and Blair became embroiled in a funding scandal involving Bernie Ecclestone.

Politicians are human, but throughout the latter sequence Blair was hailed in large parts of the media as a crusading genius. The prism through which events are perceived determines the narrative. At the moment if Brown brought peace to the Middle East and solved the global economic crisis single-handedly he would be blamed for trying to do too much.

The obvious imbalance, though, is cold comfort for Brown and his despairing party. Once a Prime Minister has lost the media and lacks the artistic skills to connect with voters through any other means, he is in deep trouble. The degree to which he is in trouble is highlighted by the most trivial item on the list of recent calamities. After smiling absurdly on the You tube video I am told he is in a state now as to what to do in public appearances. Once he was accused of being too dour and instructed to lighten up. Now he will be worried about lightening up. To smile or not to smile? When that becomes a question of some significance the self-confidence of any public figure is bound to collapse.

There is more to this, though, than a manic smile, malevolent emails and a Commons' defeat. When a party starts to obsess about a leader, the focus is nearly always a symptom of a deeper crisis. After all Brown is a big political figure. He was a Labour Chancellor for 11 years and then achieved his ambition to become leader of his party, an extraordinary political feat. Most leaders in waiting do not become leaders. Most Labour Chancellors tend not to last for very long. Brown was a long serving Chancellor and a leader in waiting for more than a decade who then became a leader. A bumbling fool does not pull that one off.

Other circumstances are partly to blame for a party in crisis. They always are. Look at the Conservatives after the 1997 election. They switched leader three times in fairly quick succession. The changes made little difference because the cause of the party's crisis was deeper.

Now the precarious, ill -defined and defensive new Labour project has its own inevitable identity crisis. Some so called Blairites join the Conservatives in hailing vaguely the empowerment of individuals and communities through a smaller state. One Blairite columnist expressed disapproval this week because Brown seeks the advice of the "left leaning" Ed Balls, as if it was the ultimate sin for a Labour Prime Minister to consult anyone that leant leftwards. Lurking within this observation is the most revealing cause of Labour's crisis. For quite a few prominent Labour figures it is a sin for a left of centre party to lean towards the left of centre.

Left wing pressure groups with strong union backing such as Compass have distinct proposals on a range of issues and most immediately on the part privatisation of the Post Office which it opposes. In essence the divide is the most familiar and important in British politics. It is about the role of the state and its relationship with markets, public services and individuals.

When a party is performing well in the polls divisions are hidden or suppressed. When a party is in crisis anything can happen. After 1997 the Conservatives elected the wrong leader twice when decent alternatives were available in leadership contests. The third time they deposed Iain Duncan Smith and replaced him by Michael Howard without any contest at all.

I suspect the only way Labour would change its leader is a variation of the Conservatives' third attempt. If Brown were to resign this summer, it is possible Alan Johnson would get the job unopposed and told to get on with it. We are leaping several hurdles here and the leaps would be further symptoms of a party in crisis, as it was when Howard became leader.

A change of leader is unlikely partly because there has not been a single opinion poll suggesting that Labour's fortunes would improve with a new one, a big difference with the fall of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 when surveys revealed that a new leader would give the Tories a significant boost. Then Michael Heseltine and others were also desperate to become Prime Minister.

Now Alan Johnson gives the impression he would much prefer to perform live at a gig in Wembley than move into No.10. A cabinet of half formed politicians brought up under the total dominance of Blair/Brown duopoly lacks obvious leadership candidates, at least ones ready to be Prime Minister this summer. So after what will be another summer of hell, Brown's fate is almost certainly to continue at the helm, bashed about by the newspapers, nearly all of them dancing to the same tunes, and viewed with disdain by his colleagues. He has been compared recently with Jim Callaghan and John Major as they headed towards electoral oblivion.

In his need to perform a balancing act with his restive, divided, bemused party, his dependence on a seemingly disreputable Downing Street court and in his knackered, resilient, scheming determination to keep going almost as an end in itself he reminds me more of Harold Wilson. From 1968 onwards, Wilson was attacked relentlessly by the media and colleagues convinced that an exhausted, ill-tempered, neurotic leader was on the way out. Mind you, Wilson won two more elections and left voluntarily eight years later.

s.richards@independent.co.uk