For new Labour the gospel is not Marx but Manchester United, or rather, its mouthy manager, Sir Alex Ferguson. Alastair Campbell tells of a black moment in his first election campaign when the strain of fielding a million queries and contradictory advice had him “struggling to focus”.

On the road to Damascus – or was it Doncaster? – Ferguson bellowed down the mobile to his disciple: “Put the blinkers on and get tunnel vision. Don’t be distracted. Do your job.”

Blair’s former media chief adds: “From that moment on, I did . . . I came across as being a bit hard and even brutal when I was with the government because of it – but it worked. I got things done when I had my blinkers on.” Trouble is, Alastair still forgets to take them off.

Gordon Brown, another football fanatic (I can reveal he has inside dope on the next England manager), has arrived at that Sir Alex-Alastair state of mind. The prime minister is no longer listening to the people who shout contrary advice to him in the dugout, no longer trying to act out of character. Down in the polls he may be, but he is utterly convinced he is no John Major.

The last Tory prime minister, tortured by divisions in his party, sensitive to press criticism and bewildered by sex and sleaze scandals, crumpled. For a month now Brown has been getting the kicking of his life, a horrible surprise for a precocious overachiever. A few nights ago during the course of a dinner I got an insight into how he is bearing up.

He has lost weight, looks sharp and is more willing to turn on the charm. We saw a public side to this in the summer when he exuded a new confidence and authority. But to change the popular perception of his character there are limits to what he will do. The prime minister cannot, will not, answer the question, “When are you going to stop beating your wife?” or its equally impossible equivalent, “When are you going to start to be cheerful, chirpy Tony Blair?” His critics have raised a bar he knows he cannot jump.

As Donorgate, Datagate and Opengate (the immigration figures scandal) have knocked his government for six he is taking the long view. Murphy’s law is part of the warp and weft of politics. These things pass. As for the weekly mauling he gets at prime minister’s questions, he says it doesn’t really hurt – few watch it – though I don’t really believe him as it must, at the very least, impact on the morale of his own benches, front and back.

Indeed my early nickname for David Cameron – “Flashman” – has been taken up by Labour MPs who observe the baiting of the PM.

But the Church of Scotland minister’s son is openly furious when the Tory leader and George Osborne, his shadow chancellor, impugn his honesty over the donations scandal. He repeatedly invokes his moral upbringing by his father.

Brown is also prickly about his personal responsibility for a decade of steady and stable economic growth and will not concede an inch to the record of the Tories under Ken Clarke, the former chancellor. If Brown were to write an autobiography, he would take the title of Anthony Trollope’s novel He Knew He was Right. This is the area to watch. In the midst of woes over Northern Rock and fears for the wider health of the economy, he is strikingly ungloomy about Britain’s prospects. Is his confidence justified?

The Tories have twice prophesied there are bad times just around the corner. Both times they landed in the soup. In 1998 Francis Maude, the shadow chancellor, memorably predicted: “Goodbye Iron Chancellor, may he rust in peace.” Economic growth soared and unemployment fell in 1999. The funeral rites were pronounced over Maude instead. The same predictions were repeated three years ago with equal lack of success.

The prime minister believes his stewardship of the economy will give him the decisive advantage when the British public looks at him and then at Cameron. They must see he is the weightier character.

Others are more pessimistic. Public sector debt is up and revenues and consumer spending are forecast to go down. Interest payments as a percentage of income who people who have just acquired mortgages leapt from 15% in February 2006 to 18.6% in September two months ago. Interest payments for many will shoot up again by up to a third next year when 1.7m homeowners come to the end of their fixed-rate deals. A government can put up with a bit of sleaze, even incompetence. But against a backcloth of economic discontent all grievances are magnified. The memory of negative equity finished off the Tories in 1997.

Economic forecasters are there to make weather forecasters look good, so I merely point out the dangers.

Another bloody clash between government and opposition will take place over terrorism as early as next week when the home affairs select committee reports. In the new year, Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, is going over the top again to get the maximum pretrial detention of suspected terrorists extended from 28 to 42 days. This is a big gamble. In the political climate after 7/7 a figure like this was an achievable target, but Tony Blair’s hysterical advocacy of a repressive 90-day lockup period without charge curdled the blood. People who had hitherto thought habeas corpus was a magic spell taught at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Academy, discovered civil liberties. Neutral observers are highly suspicious of any government that plays the national security card for advantage.

With a mixture of cool reason and a former chief whip’s arm-twisting skills, Smith hopes to talk round Labour rebels, she tells me. Her strongest suit is the independent judicial oversight of any extension. The judges have, in the name of civil liberties, notoriously frustrated government attempts to kick out of Britain foreign-born terrorists. She will say the judges are unlikely to bang up suspects for another fortnight to please the politicians without real evidence that the police need more time.

Smith is adamant that the real differences between the parties are now “negligible”. Try telling that to her Tory opposite number, the smiling assassin David Davis. He won’t be content until he has her head on a platter.

In what promises to be another gruelling year of political warfare, is Brown’s self-confidence misplaced? Let’s give it the Charles Clarke test.

Clarke, you will remember, was the former home secretary who proposed a reasonable deal with the opposition on terror before Blair hijacked it. He is a moderniser but claims to be a Labour loyalist above all else. “I have always been a leader person,” he once told me. “I was a Wilson-ite, a Callaghan-ite and even a Foot-ite. I have always been an ‘-ite’,” he added drolly.

In a series of hard-hitting speeches earlier this year Clarke threw down a challenge to Brown. The new prime minister must avoid government by faction; he also had to prove that his “politics have a purpose” on the basis that the next election could not be won on what Labour had achieved in the last three elections.

On the issue of a narrowly based circle there is grumbling, even outside the ranks of the Blairites. Complaints mount about overcentralisation and delay at No 10. Alistair Darling, the chancellor, a loyalist through and through, has been treated as a puppet at times. It is alleged No 10 briefed against David Miliband, the foreign secretary, at the Labour party conference. On these grounds alone, Clarke might find the prime minister wanting.

And so to the future. Brown hasn’t yet done “the vision thing”. He cannot expect gratitude from the voters for his past achievements. However unfairly, the voters believe steady and stable growth should now be a given.

Despite the knocks, Brown has the allegiance of his party. Labour is Brownite in a way that it was never Blairite. That should prevent him going the way of Major, humbled by his Eurosceptics. But Blair’s achievement was to govern against the instincts of his party but with the grain of aspirational Britain. The prime minister sounds like he wants to placate the middle classes. His predecessor sounded as if he identified with them. There is a world of difference between these two mindsets.

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